The UK and Ireland’s bid to host the European Championship in 2028 has one glaring issue
“Casement Park?”
There was high degree of puzzlement when the British and Irish associations revealed their Belfast venue for the European Championship finals in 2028. Windsor Park, fine: century-old home to Linfield and Northern Ireland’s national team. But Casement Park? That was a new one.
Social historians recognised the name more than football fans did. Sir Roger Casement was a diplomat turned Irish nationalist who was among 16 rebels executed after the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, hence his being memorialised in the naming of a Gaelic Games stadium in Andersonstown, west Belfast, in the early 1950s.
The biggest puzzle about Casement Park, though, is whether it really will welcome the Euros in 2028. Or is it doomed to remain a trick question: “Name the Euro venue that did not stage a match?”
Old antagonisms lurk not far below the surface and the financial implications, whatever the potential social legacy, are significant. History has its own role to play, bearing in mind Ireland’s sporting division between the Gaelic Games and the rest.
The divide was exposed to wider view in 2007, when the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) suspended rules that enshrined its historic opposition to “English pastimes”. The occasion was hiring out its 82,000-capacity Croke Park HQ as temporary home for the Republic of Ireland’s association football team.
Reasoning was practical. The FA of Ireland (FAI) needed a temporary home while Lansdowne Road was redeveloped into what is now the Aviva Stadium and paid handsomely for the hire. Ireland’s rugby team also had to play Six Nations matches at Croke Park (incidentally, Croke Park was also considered as a Euro 2028 venue, before the Aviva Stadium was ultimately preferred as Dublin’s venue).
The politicking, by and large, has not impinged quite as directly on the proposed rebirth of Casement Park. Again, the reason is simple: the venue not only lacks the symbolism of Croke Park, but has been derelict for a decade. The gates were locked after its last match in 2013. Quite why the stadium was allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair is unclear. Nonetheless, discussion on its state and fate has been shaded by deeper contentions.
This past decade has seen a sadly predictable sequence of redevelopment proposals and matching objections. A dismissal by the High Court of a final objection in 2022 appeared to be a long-awaited green light for a stadium that was the answer to a UEFA prayer. The initial plan envisaged a capacity of 34,500 – 4,500 above the UEFA minimum and 16,00
