St Conleth's Park

Looks good from what's currently there. No more railings too. Wonder will Joe McQuillan be happy with that....

Will they be burdening the clubs again to fund this like the Hawkfield levy?

No doubt a bigger club house is needed but a few extra seats will do little to improve the overall state of the place. I'd rather see a new website that's run properly and the abolition of the Hawkfield levy to ease the burden on the clubs.

There was an article online this morning on The Independent about the wealth of the Sheikh who owns Kildangan Stud and other massive amounts of land across Kildare. The man is worth €18 billion, surely they can be persuaded to part with a few shillings? I know they donate a lot to various charities in the county already. Worth a try.

The plans look great but hope the burden for funding wont fall on the clubs. They are already struggling with the Hawkfield levy and club draw tickets. A lot of the smaller clubs in particular are stretched as far as they can go already.

According to Kildare Nationalist Twitter last night, as far as I recall, they said no extra cost on clubs - for Phase 1 at least.

Of course they still have to get planning etc.

I'm as good as any lad to criticise the board, but fair play, people were wondering and they were questioned when they said they had plans coming down the line and they have delivered the plans at least.

And I do think it's important - yeah, Kildare needs underage coaches but you need a HQ to be proud of, you need a county grounds, you need a place where young lads and lassies dream of playing. A place that looks worthy of the county team. It's all part of the overall - as an official fit-for-purpose website would be too!! Doesn't coach players but part of the overall.

Credit to the board - the planning is probably the hardest part now.

I'm not too up with these things, but would they have done some consultations with residents before even getting to this stage of planning? Or will that happen now..

Don't see any floodlights on the drawings.

GAA 1928 was thinking the same, overall good to see and at least its something to work towards and measure against and I'm sure the GAA will come under pressure to part fund it as well.

Gaa1928 wrote:

Don't see any floodlights on the drawings.

find to get planning permission for lights on barracks side the local would object to it

Agree it's a good thing to have a proper HQ and the facilities to go with it.
What's the completion timeline.

End of 2017 for the Club House building and potentially 2020 for the development of the new stand. New stand would bring the capacity up to 13K+. Planning is the big issue for floodlights. Dont expect to see floodlights on the horizon anytime soon.

Happy to see this. The dressing 4 rooms are atrocious. You wouldnt swing a cat in them never mind having a panel of 25 to 30 lads getting togged out and treatment in them. They certainly should have been dealt with some years back in my opinion. How costly could it have been to extend them?

All in all though a positive development and something we can no longer be ashamed to bring teams to. Let hope the economy stays buoyant.

While it is all positive, without floodlights it means that we will still have to drag out to Hawkfield for games under lights while the hopefully excellent facility in Newbridge will lie idle. We would still have no potential to play Saturday night matches in the N.F.L. and probably continue to play the later rounds of our local championships in near darkness in Newbridge in October.

New dressings room, yes please, but without floodlights I won't be pushed on the rest of the development.

I'll believe it when I sit in one of those seats. I seen the proposed new stadium given the same treatment. Look how that turned out.
The lack of floodlights is mad. Is there another County ground that does not have them. With lightning technology now I doubt it would intrude enough to cause any issues. You can already look down into those houses at the moment. Why not compromise. Ask the residents for permission and in return put up a privacy screen at the back of the terrace.

Tullamore, wexford pk, drogheda, Nolan pk, aughrim, mulingar, pearse pk.. all in leinster with no proper floodlights. I'm sure others could be added.

Not sure about Dr Cullen park carlow either.

Yes even temporary roll up screens

Yeah when you think about it there's not that many grounds lit up.......you can add Navan to that list to Seamus as there's have been decommissioned!!

Dr Cullen park turned on their lights during the summer there!

Yeah forgot about navan.

remember this bad boy in Toughers.......



full link to the plans here....

http://www.totarch.ie/portfolio/leisure-GAA-Stadium-Kildare.html

For the record I think the planned redevelopment of Conleths is a good thing and long overdue. Great to keep HQ in the town but like Rex said I will believe it when I see it built.

Good man Sam - was trying to remember earlier what it looked like!

Were we mad or what?!

Fair play to Dermot Reilly he really started the ball rolling with this and is long overdue. The county board needed a push and he did it..

steviegenius wrote:

Fair play to Dermot Reilly he really started the ball rolling with this and is long overdue. The county board needed a push and he did it..

Just a pity the clubs didn't have the balls to actually elect him to oversee his plans. It still wrangles with me.

From what I heard when the issue of flood lights came up a while ago, it wasn't the actually lights that was the problem, it was the fact that there would be a lot of activity and noise in and around St. Conleth's once the sun went down.

Decent, a step in the right direction and so on. Just hope we don't make the same mistake as every other county ground project in the history of modern GAA. It's a fine, basic stand, all that is needed for now with bigger issues, but it shouldn't be expensive as it's simple. Cost county boards pay for a stand, is the cost soccer clubs across the water pay for all-seater stadia!