30,000 football fans, 130,000 racegoers, 800 horses, 5,000 bottles of champagne, 4,000 hot beef rolls — these are just some of the mindnumbing stats that will sum up Galway this Sunday when the merging of the All-Ireland Football Final, the Galway International Arts Festival and the Galway Races collide to create one of the weekends of the summer.
With The Sawdoctors headlining the closing Big Top concert on Sunday night hours after the football final benween Galway and Armagh, Galway Races is setting up for the busiest week of the year with the racing offering a massive €270,000 of prize money.
Although 30,000 football fans will be heading to Croke Park for Sunday’s mouthwatering decider against Armagh, Pearse Stadium in Salthill is being prepped to host up to 12,000 fans for a live screening of the final.
The ticketed, free event is to be family friendly, with alcohol and smoking banned from the grounds, and attendees encouraged to travel to Salthill on foot or by public transport. The fan zone is being organised by Galway City Council with the GAA, in co-ordination with emergency services.
Patrons will be able to watch a giant 60 square metre High Definition screen from the field, or from stands, and a “state-of-the-art stadium sound system” is to be installed for the event.
A link for tickets on Galway City Council’s website had not yet gone live at time of going to press.
The Galway City Council had considered opening a fan zone in Eyre Square – as is tradition for football and hurling finals historically taking place in September, but trees in full leaf would reduce sightlines to a big screen at the south-eastern end, and the Galway International Arts Festival has the upper, paved part of the square booked for its Festival Village until Monday, July 29.
The Skeff Bar will have a screen in the tent in the Festival Village, but numbers are strictly limited and patrons will need to get there early to secure admission.
Informed sources said local authority officials had received a positive response from Arts Festival organisers about using the Big Top in Fisheries Field to screen the Gaelic football decider on Sunday, but the Saw Doctors would have needed the time to do sound checks and prepare the stage ahead of their Arts Festival finale on Sunday, with doors opening at 7pm.
Throw-in at Croke Park is at 3.30pm, and with delays and extra time a possibility, plus celebrations, TV coverage may not conclude until around 6pm. Also, ushering out thousands of exuberant or despondent Galway GAA fans, to make way for 5,000 Saw Doctors’ fans, might not be a swift operation.
City West councillor John Connolly (FF ), who last week publicly called on the city council to arrange a fan zone, said he was “surprised but delighted” Pearse Stadium could be used, as he expected Galway GAA volunteers who run the stadium to be away at Croke Park on All-Ireland final day. “Families who couldn’t get tickets to go to Dublin have somewhere to go now which is brilliant, and the most important thing really is that Galway gets the win!”
