GAA: Austin Stack Park in Tralee has become the latest GAA ground to be considered for sale and development. At Monday's meeting of the Kerry County Board, chair Seán Walsh announced that interest had been expressed by developers in acquiring the venue.

This follows intense speculation in recent weeks that the Clare County Board will consider disposing of Cusack Park and moving to a new location. Although this course of action hasn't yet been discussed at county board or county executive level, a preliminary decision on the future of the Ennis venue is likely to be taken within the next two months.

In the case of Stack Park, any relocation would include the offices of the county board, which are situated in the ground.

"We have tentative proposals in relation to the current site at the Austin Stack Park with a view to a total relocation of our facilities to a greenfield site," said Walsh. "That is all we have at the moment, and that is all I want to say on the matter until we have definite recommendations to put to you.

"It's the way things are going with grounds within urban areas these days. Moving would afford you more space - you would probably have two or three pitches with a new stadium and new office block. We are very caught for space where we are, between the railway and the John Sheehy Road, so we have no room for expansion.

"So while we are going nowhere yet, we are going to look at all the options, and if it's for the betterment of the Kerry County Board then we will consider it."

As mentioned by Walsh, the issue of town-centre venues is becoming recurrent with property prices driving up the value of the land and traffic management measures restricting access and parking. Stack Park suffers from both of these restrictions and will suffer even further because of the construction of a new roundabout just outside the ground.

Cork club Nemo Rangers, the current Munster football champions, recently completed a move to a bigger, greenfield site further out from the city, on which an impressive new complex was unveiled last year.

The situation in Ennis isn't as advanced. Although there has been a lot of speculation that Cusack Park might be sold and Clare's county ground moved to a more spacious location, the matter hasn't even received a formal airing yet.

"So far all discussion of this is merely speculation," according to Clare PRO Des Crowe. "It took off when there was a suggestion that the area we're in might be rezoned as commercial, but there hasn't been any official discussion about relocation.

"Now that's not to say that there won't be because we have to make a decision as to the future. We will either have to upgrade Cusack Park or move to another site and I expect that will be discussed between now and March."

At present, the ground holds just over 25,000 and is located opposite a busy supermarket in an urban area with severe traffic and parking restrictions. Whereas this is manageable on most Sundays, recent experiences of Saturday matches has been less satisfactory.

The relatively small capacity of the ground has also created problems in that, throughout the county's golden age of the past 10 years, Clare have been unable to stage big championship matches and so have had to play in neutral venues.

"Our idea," says Crowe, "would be to raise the capacity to 35,000 and put ourselves in a position to host championship matches and enter into home-and-away arrangements with Limerick, Cork and Tipperary."

There is already planning permission to double the capacity of the stand from its current 3,500, and the county board have been advised that Cusack Park would be capable of accommodating the necessary redevelopment.

Plans for a greenfield site would not include the county's new 70-acre training facility near Tulla. "No, that's purely for training purposes," says Crowe. "We already have planning permission to go ahead and we'll be laying two or three pitches, hopefully developing that to seven ultimately and including state-of-the-art preparation facilities. Any new site for a county ground would remain in the Ennis area."

It is estimated that the sale of Cusack Park as commercial land could yield up to €35,000,000.