TIPPERARY GAA INSIST their Semple Stadium redevelopment plan is ‘a long-term project’ and accept that they will have to wait for the funding to help finance the upgrade which is envisaged to cost €8-9 million.
The Tipperary county board have been planning a major refurbishment of the Kinane Stand at their Thurles venue over the past couple of years.
Planning permission has been granted for the project which will involve an extra tier aimed at putting in place corporate facilities and the installation of a gym to complement the county’s existing training facilities at the nearby Dr Morris Park.
Major constraints in GAA funding are now likely with all playing activity currently shut down and the 2020 championships set to impacted by the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.
But Tipperary secretary Tim Floyd insists they were always planning on playing a waiting game before the current public health crisis emerged with other stadium projects around the country a bigger priority for the GAA.
“This has been a project for two years really, all the design work and getting it ready for planning. It wasn’t an immediate project, it’s a long term project. It’ll probably be longer now in the present climate. We have planning permission now for five years and we’ve an opportunity to get the ball rolling within that five years. We’ve invested a few pound now in the design and everything so we hope it’ll eventually happen anyway.
“The main thing is that we’ve a project ready to go now in the event of funding coming in. We know it’ll be slow enough now coming back from Croke Park and Government funding as well with everything that’s going on. We have it there now for when everything is right.
“We knew that anyway, when we did do a presentation to Croke Park last year, we were well down the pecking order because they had their designated projects, the likes of Walsh Park and Páirc Tailteann and Newbridge. But at least we wanted to get in there.
“It’ll take a year and a half to two years I’d say from the time you start. It’s all a second tier so there’s none of it actually on the ground floor. The existing structure is there so you’re building within it.”
Floyd felt there was a need to make improvements to compete with other major national stadia.
“We’re probably falling behind when you see a new stadium coming on stream like Páirc Uí Chaoimh and the developments that have gone on in Croke Park. It’s getting more difficult to maintain stadiums because it’s a costly exercise so we just wanted to have a plan and vision in place.
“Especially in the corporate side of it, we’ve a corporate area in the planning for 200-250 people with bar and kitchen facilities. That’s a big part of it because we’ve never really had that in Semple Stadium. It was lacking that.”
Tipperary had considered developing further their setup at Dr Morris Park with the lack of a gym owned by the county board proving a challenge in recent years for the training of their teams.
“We in the county board don’t really have a gym and Semple Stadium doesn’t have a gym. We’re constantly hiring facilities like across the way in the LIT Campus. So we just needed to be self-sufficient and that was all part of the plan. The benefit of having the gym on that side of the stadium is it’ll be right next door to our training facilities in Dr Morris Park.
“We originally intended building a Centre of Excellence in Dr Morris Park. We had actually a plan drawn up and all, then we sat back and said, ‘Where’s the point in us building another new building?’
“We said we’d build it within the confines of Semple Stadium. That was the thinking behind it, we said we’d change our direction completely and decided to just build it within the stadium. We’d have access to the dressing-rooms there as well.”
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