Pearse Stadium () is the principal GAA stadium in

Galway Galway ( ; , ) is a City status in Ireland, city in (and the county town of) County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lough Corrib and Galway Bay. It is the most populous settlement in the province of Connacht, the List of settleme ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

. The Galway GAA

Gaelic football Gaelic football (; short name '')'', commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA, or football, is an Irish team sport. A form of football, it is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score ...

and

hurling Hurling (, ') is an outdoor Team sport, team game of ancient Gaelic culture, Gaelic Irish origin, played by men and women. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goa ...

teams use the stadium for their home games. The stadium, amongst others in the province of

Connacht Connacht or Connaught ( ; or ), is the smallest of the four provinces of Ireland, situated in the west of Ireland. Until the ninth century it consisted of several independent major Gaelic kingdoms (Uí Fiachrach, Uí Briúin, Uí Maine, C ...

, is also used for games in the Connacht Senior Football Championship

History

Early years

The stadium opened on 16 June 1957, as 16,000 people came to watch

beat Tipperary in

, and Kerry in football, and to watch Bishop Michael Browne bless the facility. The stadium was opened by GAA President, Séamus McFerran. Among those invited were the 12 surviving members of the 1923 all-Ireland winning hurling team. The site on which the stadium was built was known locally as The Boggers. The site was offered to the

Gaelic Athletic Association The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; ; CLG) is an Irish international amateur sports, amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional Irish sports o ...

by the town secretary Sean Gillan, and terms of purchase were negotiated. Much of the land was very wet and boggy. Work was being carried out to deepen the River Corrib at the time, so the infill from the river was used to fill in parts of the pitch and give it an elevated sideline. Pearse Stadium hosted many hurling and football matches since, but it fell into disuse in the early 1990s.

Re-opening

The stadium was renovated in 2002 and reopened in May 2003 with a capacity then set at 34,000. Since the major redevelopment of the ground, it has regularly hosted the Connacht Senior Football Championship final in recent years. In 2006 the International Series versus Australia was played in Pearse Stadium which was the first time it took place outside GAA Headquarters

Croke Park Croke Park (, ) is a Gaelic games stadium in Dublin, Ireland. Named after Archbishop Thomas Croke, it is referred to as Croker by GAA fans and locals. It serves as both the principal national stadium of Ireland and headquarters of the Gaelic At ...

. On 21 June 2008, Irish vocal pop band

Westlife Westlife are an Irish pop group formed in Dublin in 1998. The group consists of members Nicky Byrne, Shane Filan, Kian Egan and Mark Feehily. Brian McFadden was a member before leaving in March 2004. The group disbanded in 2012 and later reun ...

held a concert for Back Home Tour supporting their album Back Home. English singer

Ed Sheeran Edward Christopher Sheeran ( ; born 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter. Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and raised in Framlingham, Suffolk, he began writing songs around the age of eleven. In early 2011, Sheeran independently r ...

also held two concert in Pearse Stadium on 12 and 13 May 2018 and an additional stand was made so the stadium could host a total 63,000 fans over the two nights.

Parking and safety

The stadium occasionally receives negative publicity due to the lack of dedicated off-street parking. In response to repeated representations made by local residents as well as community groups campaigning on pedestrian rights and road safety issues, the Garda Siochana handed out large numbers of parking tickets on at least two occasions in October 2010. Some GAA fans saw this as harsh, and one disgruntled supporter even described the Fixed Charge Penalties issued to illegally parked vehicles as a "blatant attack" on the GAA itself. However, both the GAA County Board and the Garda Siochana were adamant that they had issued repeated warnings in advance and insisted that illegally parked vehicles were ticketed after these warnings were ignored. A nationwide health and safety survey of GAA grounds in 2011 resulted in the certified capacity of the stadium being reduced to 26,197.

References

External links