GAA intends to have crowds at games when the intercounty season resumes

After the GAA released their roadmap outlining retur to play for the GAA last Friday, GAA president JOhn Horan has outlined how the organisation intends to have spectators at the games once the season resumes in October.

Speaking to the Na Fianna GAA TV on Sunday, Horan outlined how they/ plan to implement social distancing within stadiums with Croke Park able to hold 21,000 safely with 2m distances, while it would increase to 42,000 if the social distance was reduced to 1m.

Horan said,

“We have already worked it out that if large crowds are to gather over 5,000 we could probably put 21,000 into Croke Park safely.

“The operations team in Croke Park have mapped it out. Obviously, that blue mesh that’s used in Croke Park would be used to block off seats. It would cause impracticalities in terms of there would be an element of lottery for tickets and premium ticket holders would probably have to get accredited the following year.

“Until social distancing is scaled back, we just won’t be able to pack Croke Park. It is our intention to get it open and going when we get the inter-county games going and if it goes back to one metre we would be able to double the attendance probably to 42,000.

“There’s an issue over the Hill and whether we would be able to get seating in there because really controlling crowds is always going to be a nightmare going forward.”