Ireland Must Bid for Euro 2016.

I see that Poland and the Ukraine are hosting Euro 2012. That ought to be fun if they ever get the stadia finished. Mind you I wouldn't fancy the drive between a game Gdansk and another one in Donetsk or Odessa. Then there is the issue of changing currencies and languages. Could either the Ukraine or Poland not have just hosted the competition themselves? I would have thought either of them would be big enough to have managed it on their own.

How hard can it be to host such a tournament. Surely the will would be there politically and economically to make sure it's a success. The European Championships are such a wonderful occasion and I'm sure any country snap your arm off for the oppertunity of hosting it.

Which brings me along to the year of 2016. To cut to the chase I think Ireland should make a bid to host the tournament by themselves. Yes, I believe that it makes complete sense that the Republic of Ireland in the guise of the FAI make the bid to host Euro 2016 all by their lonesomes. I actually think it would be foolish not to and a successful bid would represent our salvation from this nasty recession we find ourselves in.

I'll let you in on the plan. Croke Park and the new Landsdowne Road would be the two main Stadia obviously enough. One of them would host the final and the opening game and whatever other matches in between. The same as Wembley was used in Euro 96.

After that you can take your pick from the following stadia;

In Limerick you have the Gaelic Grounds (Cap. 50,000) and the famous Thomand Park (about 27,000 I think). The Gaelic Grounds is terribly underused. It has only been close to full once (last year's Munster Hurling Final) and Thomand is obviously top class.

Pairc Ui Chaoimh in Cork would be available, Semple Stadium in Thurles (both can take between 50,000 and 60,000 people), Pearse Stadium in Galway, Clones, Castlebar, Nowlan Park in Kilkenny, Portlaoise, Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney. There are 8 stadia in this paragraph alone each comfortably able to hold over 30,000 spectators. To my mind there are 12 grounds (I hate the word stadia) capable of hosting a game in the Eurpean football Championships.

A certain amount of work would need to be done on each of course but not as much as you'd think either. In Croke Park, temporary seating is already put in for the International soccer games without any hassle. In fact there is hardly ever anyone even sitting on them. Borrussia Dortmund used to have temporary seating in the Nord Tribune, the biggest terrace in Europe when they used to play in the Champions League. (I had the privilege of being there myself one night when they played Real Madrid but that's another post).

Who knows, by 2016 UEFA might have rolled back on their anti terracing stance. They can surely be made safe. In fact they are already safe and are used in many grounds without incident or fear of it. Managing crowds properly is the key to safety and surely that can be done in this day and age.

The stadiums might not all be up to scratch. So what, improve them. Renovate them, do whatever it takes. We have 7 years to do it for God's sake and it's not like there aren't any builders out there scratching their arses just now.

The second point is that we might not have the infrastructure to handle such an event. Of course we do and again whatever improvements need to be made, we have still have 7 years to do them. If we need more hotels, a better road or rail network we should build them and when the tournament is over and the whole country has gotten rich off the back of it, we would still have all this fantastic infrasture in place which would attract investment into the country for years to come. The Olympic effect they might call it.

The GAA can't possibly have any argument against it. First of all, they have already opened Croke Park to other sports so any moral objections have already long gone out the window. It's only for about six weeks anyway so it's not going to make that much difference. Secondly and much more importantly though is the fact that the country is on it's knees economically and let's face it, there is no prospect of a recovery in sight.

People are already emigrating in their droves and it's about to get a whole lot worse, it's in the national interest that the GAA throw their full support behind this proposal. It would save us from recession and make the GAA a lot of money as well. On a practical level, it would undoubtedly disrupt the GAA championships of 2016 but you know what disrupted the championships of 1916, a couple of little things called the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme so it could be worse. The championships could just be postponed during the Euro's, they could start them earlier and finish a little later. The off season in the GAA is long enough to handle such disruption.

As a venue, Ireland would be an amazing place to hold the tournament. It is actually a beautiful country with very friendly people who love having a laugh. Essentially this is true even if we forget it sometimes. I'm sure our European cousins would be totally psyched at the idea of spending their summer holidays roadtripping around Ireland following the footy. Plus Ireland is so small that once you get here it wouldn't involve too many long trips. The towns and cities could handle the crowds. They are used to it. Thurles is tiny yet it regularly caters for over 50,000 people entirely without incident on glorious championship Sundays.

Scotland are already bidding for the tournament. We are a far more attractive proposition than they are and we already have much better stadiums in situ. We are the logical choice to host this tournament. It has already been given to Austria/ Switzerland, Belguim/Holland but I think we could actually handle it on our own and I can't think of a single reason why not. There would be a lot of work involved but isn't that exactly what we are looking for right now.