Croker staff face huge task as city set for €20m extravaganza
Staff at Dublin's Les Freres Jacques restaurant Sami Talbi, Sebastien Duval, Mikael Riedel, Ludovic Plichon and Cedric Delbauve
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Saturday November 14 2009
Go Green! It's a rare double sports header which promises a stellar weekend for Irish sport and the battered economy.
But as the nation dons the green jersey for epic battles against France and Australia in soccer and rugby, Croke Park staff have an altogether busier weekend schedule.
They have the huge job of transforming the football pitch for tonight's soccer match into a rugby arena for tomorrrow's game -- and all in just 12 hours.
They must change the white lines, alter the advertising hoardings, remove the soccer nets and erect rugby posts and of course replenish food and drink supplies.
The double-header starts at 8pm tonight with Ireland battling France for a place in next summer's World Cup Finals in South Africa.
After that Ireland's Grand Slam-winning rugby side begin their season in earnest against the might of Australia at 3pm.
A spokesman for Failte Ireland said last night that the double header is likely to garner a mammoth €20m for Dublin's local economy, with hotels around the stadium so busy that they are turning customers away.
Nearly 7,000 fans of Les Blues were soaking up the hospitality of their Dublin hosts last night, with thousands of Aussies adding to the atmosphere.
Both the Croke Park Hotel and the Regency Hotel in Drumcondra said last night that they were full to the brim for the weekend with sports-mad French and Australians.
"We've been sold out for Saturday since the game was announced," said a spokesman for the Regency Hotel. "When people weren't sure whether the game was going to be on the 14th or the 18th, we had people booking both nights."
Things aren't as rosy in the garden though if you're an employee at Croke Park, as Peter McKenna, the stadium director explained last night.
"Once everybody leaves about 11.30pm on Saturday, then we'll move in for a complete clean-up of the stadium," he said. "We'll have to clean all the seats, pick up and take out the rubbish because we do a lot of recycling. We'll have to clean out the bathrooms and other public areas as well."
Branding
After that, he explained, all of the branding and advertising hoarding in the ground will have to be changed from Eircom -- the soccer sponsors -- to o2 -- the rugby sponsors.
Next up, the crew will have to take down the soccer goals and put up the rugby posts, before changing the lines on the pitch from soccer to rugby. "By then, we'll be set to open up again around 12.30pm on Sunday -- so it's effectively a 12-hour turn-around," he said.
"We'll have to do all of that with about four hours of daylight and we will have a good strong crew of 160 working through the night to get the job done. We'll try and concentrate on lining the pitch during the daylight hours as much as we can."
He added that the paint they use on the pitch wipes away when exposed to warm temperatures -- 60 degrees to be precise. "The removal mechanism we use has hot water with a kind of flushing device," he explained.
"But we won't have a spare second. We've never contemplated doing something so ambitious before -- to convert an international soccer pitch into an international rugby pitch overnight."
At least the troops can expect to avoid the kind of weather that has plagued the country all week, with Pat Clarke in the Met Eireann office explaining that there will just be "some very light rain" throughout the night tonight.
On top of all that, should we get the result we're looking for, there is bound to be another rush for flights to Paris next week as desperate fans will travel in the hope of picking up a ticket for the crucial second-leg in the Stade de France on Wednesday.
Tickets for that game, and special flights put on by Aer Lingus and Ryanair, have already been snapped up.
cowen's family conundrum: whether to Watch the match or 'the x factor' Lise Hand P10
- Colin Gleeson
Irish Independent
