Spectators' behaviour proving a barrier on safety issue

On Gaelic Games:It is a pity people just couldn't listen to common sense and not force the erection of fences

“THERE IS a distinct risk that while Croke Park itself can be viewed in the public mind as exemplifying the best in a new Ireland, the issues raised by ownership and access to Croke Park may portray the GAA as an association t hat is negative, old fashioned, political and redolent of an older Ireland.”

The above paragraph is taken from the GAA’s Marketing Sub-Committee report of 2005. Of course, the access in question concerns the opening of Croke Park to other sports, but it has a topical resonance with the GAA embroiled in an increasingly bitter row over its attempts to curtail the inclination of spectators to invade the pitch after big matches.

It’s rapidly become one of those issues where attempts to make reasoned requests have foundered on insupportable demands that people should be allowed behave as they wish regardless of consequence.

The health and safety aspects of this matter have been exhaustively presented. Contrary

to much of the criticism levelled at the authorities this has been always been the central concern.

Although the cost of settling claims by those injured in post-match incidents has been flagged for a while, certainly since the end of 2008, money has never been the main source of worry although any needless cost to the association is hardly welcome, especially these days.

The first major expression of worry came at last year’s annual congress in Cork when GAA director general Páraic Duffy described the practice as “exceptionally dangerous” and added that fears about fatalities were “not alarmist”. A near fatality in 2008 had caused major concerns in the organisation about the powerlessness of emergency services when crowds surged randomly around the venue.

There was promised an educational campaign, which never satisfactorily materialised and in the dispiritingly predictable rush to defy reasonable requests

to stay off the field at last year’s All-Ireland hurling final, stewards were injured and Kilkenny captain Michael Fennelly had to make what has now become the regular plea to ease crushing in front of the Hogan Stand presentation.

Unlike at music concerts where mosh pits (areas in front of the stage) are closed off from the rest of the concert area and have restricted capacity, there are no barriers or corrals in front of the Hogan to ease the pressure.

Last April at this year’s annual congress the information campaign was ramped up and Con Hogan, nobody’s idea of a wide-eyed alarmist, gave a presentation in which he told delegates: “I want you to consider the advice of everybody with expertise in sports event management – governments, international sports bodies, gardai, health and safety authorities, fire officers, ambulance services and our own event controllers, all of whom tell us, some from bitter and tragic experience, that when we lose control in a crowd- management situation we incur the risk, indeed the probability, of serious injury or death to patrons at our games.

“They cannot all be wrong and the 96 people who died at Hillsborough, the 66 who died at Ibrox and the 39 people who died at Heysel Stadium are proof that when pitch invasions occur, when people are crushed against barriers, when exits are blocked,

when people move against each other in counter-flows then we have lost control, people’s lives are put at risk and sooner or later we will have fatalities.”

Central to the presentation was a DVD outlining the problems caused by pitch invasions. In it, safety consultant Paul Scott described prevailing conditions as an “incubation period” in which “all factors are in place” for a disaster and that it is “a matter of time before two or three of them happen at the same time”.

He added that the “difference between getting away with it and disaster is often not that much”.

Among the principal dangers are the stampede on to the field, the crushing that takes place in front of the Hogan Stand and the overload on the egress route out on to Jones’s Road where the crowding becomes so intense, as identified by heat-imaging profiles recorded overhead in a helicopter, that it reaches standstill, making access by emergency services impossible.

Congress delegates unanimously backed – and several spoke strongly in support of – the need to prevent pitch invasions.

Last weekend, the GAA’s management committee and central council unanimously decided to erect fencing on the Hill 16 end of Croke Park in order to prevent a recurrence of what happened last year.

Why have all of these people, undisputed stake holders in the GAA, decided to support this in the face of inevitable hostility?

For a couple of minutes after last year’s hurling final the crowds held back until a number of spectators from the Hill forced their way through the cordon of stewards and, like sheep, thousands eventually followed.

Should crowds make their way down from the stands the situation will have to be reviewed and further barriers introduced.

The gardai and Dublin fire brigade are assisting in drawing up the plans for the fence on the Hill in time for the second football semi-final between Down and Kildare so there is no question of the perimeter barrier being a danger to the crowd unless a crush develops in which case emergency gates will open.

It is, of course, a pity that people just couldn’t listen to common sense on the matter and not force the erection of fences considering the GAA argued until successful for the retention of the very terracing (after twice being told by authorities to seat the Hill) that is now the main source of this problem.

Why should there be all of this potential for calamity? Is it part of a great tradition?

Except it wasn’t for three years when the Hogan Stand was being rebuilt and, anyway, no tradition is worth the dangers outlined.

Is it so that players can be with “their people” at the moment of triumph? Not according to the players’ body, the Gaelic Players Association, which supports the idea of allowing players celebrate among themselves at what is paradoxically but essentially a briefly private moment of achievement – and equally importantly allowing losing finalists a bit of space.

Plan B on the Croke Park scoreboard became an item of high amusement, as it flashed each successive failure of All-Ireland crowds to behave themselves, despite the well advertised dangers of crowd invasion.

Plan A: Grow up.

smoran@irishtimes.com