'Eircom Park' pay-off boosts soccer around the country

The Department of Tourism, Sport and Recreation will announce grants to Irish soccer today worth a total of €19 million, with clubs from the Eircom League picking up roughly one third of the total.

Shamrock Rovers will receive around €1.3 million to help complete the first phase of their stadium development in Tallaght, while St Patrick's Athletic, Dundalk and Athlone Town are each set to get around €1 million to assist them with major projects at their grounds.

"It's just fantastic news," said Rovers chairman Joe Colwell yesterday. "It gives us a chance of getting into Tallaght for the start of the new season. As I understand it we're looking at 12 weeks' work to get finished. The paperwork on this will take a week or so to sort out and after that what it will come down to is how quickly our builders can get back on site."

Work on the stadium has been at a standstill for some time, but Colwell confirmed that the latest round of funding would be enough to see the first phase through to completion.

That will give the club 3,000 seats and terracing for the same number again with the projected phase two providing the same number of seats again at a cost of roughly €2.2 million.

"Obviously we're keen to get on with phase two but the important thing for the moment is to get in there, play some games and get some revenue streams going," said Colwell.

"Up until now all of the revenue has been going out of the club, but this will be crucial in helping to turn that situation around and from that point of view this is an absolutely wonderful day for the club," he added.

The other Eircom League clubs set to receive substantial grants have all earmarked the money for major ground improvements, with Dundalk planning a new stand with around 800 seats. The €1 million the club is expected to receive today is only slightly short of what it had applied for and will come as a major boost to its long-standing plans to improve its facilities.

While the senior league clubs have taken a major chunk of the funding to be announced, the majority will go to leagues and clubs around the country, with over 200 projects receiving funding. The Kerry District League will be one of a number of organisations to receive six-figure contributions towards its development plans.

The scale of the grants being made today represents a huge leap for the FAI and the €19 million is in effect the first instalment of the deal reached with the Government last March, when Eircom Park was abandoned. The expectation is that this funding will be followed by similar rounds of grants in each of the next two years.

The nature of the projects supported is expected to shift slightly with the association already having developed a strategy for the development of major football centres which can used by a variety of different clubs and organisations. A number of schemes are still at the planning stage, with Mayfield in Cork expected to be the first to go ahead. None was advanced enough to be considered for funding this time around.

"This money is hugely important for the game here," said a senior FAI source last night. "Qualifying for the World Cup is fantastic and everybody will have great craic for a month, but there is a permanency attached to this stuff. The money that comes in from the Government over the next few years is going to have an enormous impact on the game right across the country."