A graffiti-scrawled hoarding flanks Belfast’s Casement Park. The gates to what was once Northern Ireland’s premier ground for Gaelic football and hurling are locked. Inside, the forlorn pitch is overgrown and the ruined concrete stands are tangled with weeds.
But fast-forward five years and the site, named for a British diplomat who became an unlikely Irish nationalist icon, could be the venue for some of the Euro 2028 football championship matches if London and Dublin win their joint bid to host the tournament.
For a still deeply divided region commemorating last month’s 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended most of the violence after three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland, the symbolism of a joint bid between islands that share a history of colonialism and conflict speaks volumes.
“It would be a wonderful conclusion [to the Good Friday anniversary] — showing that we are now a grown-up community, happy in our skin, happy embracing other people’s culture, rather than suspicious and scowling across fences,” said Jarlath Burns, incoming president of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the governing body for Irish national sports.
Traditional community identities in Northern Ireland can determine which sports people play. Rugby is widely seen as a more unionist sport, while Gaelic games — Gaelic football, hurling and camogie — form part of the nationalist identity. Both communities play soccer but the Windsor Park football ground is in a largely unionist area of the capital.
The Irish Football Association, founded in 1880 when Britain ruled the whole of Ireland, has backed using Casement Park for the Euro 2028 bid — but not all fans agree. The Amalgamation of Official NI Supporters’ Clubs, which is recognised by the IFA, said: “It is our view, and indeed our preference, that football tournaments should be hosted by football stadiums.”
And Casement Park, the 70-year-old home of County Antrim GAA in nationalist and largely catholic West Belfast, is not just any stadium. Its name and history are synonymous with Irish independence struggles.
Roger Casement, the son of a protestant army officer, was born in Dublin but grew up in Antrim. He exposed human rights abuses as a British diplomat in Congo and Peru and was knighted in 1911. But he converted to the Irish nationalist cause and was hanged five years later in London for running guns to republican rebels seeking to overthrow British rule.
The island was partitioned in 1921, with Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom while Ireland gained independence.
But within 50 years, Northern Ireland was plunged into what was to prove a 30-year conflict involving republican paramilitaries in the IRA fighting to oust the British and loyalist gunmen battling to stay in the UK. Soldiers sent by London were also guilty of atrocities.
Casement Park was occupied by the British army early in the so-called Troubles. In 1988, it was the grisly scene of the IRA’s beating of two British army corporals who were later shot dead. In 2006, it was used to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of 10 IRA hunger strikers in the Maze prison.
After the peace accord, there were plans to develop the site of that notorious jail into a state of the art stadium shared by football, rugby and Gaelic games. The project was abandoned after opposition from some unionists, but in 2011, the power-sharing executive instead agreed to partially fund the upgrade of the three sports’ venues.
Belfast’s Windsor Park soccer stadium and Kingspan rugby stadium have both already had makeovers but Casement Park, which hosted its last game in 2013, became ensnared in years of planning problems and legal battles. The £77.5mn redevelopment only got the green light last summer.
But neither Windsor Park nor Kingspan is big enough to host Euro 2028 games, so the planned bowl-shaped 34,500 capacity Casement Park, designed by the architects of the £1bn Tottenham Hotspur stadium in north London, was included in the list of 10 tournament venues.
“It sends a message of reconciliation, generosity and that sport can unite us,” said Paul McErlean, who captained County Antrim’s Gaelic football team in the 1980s and 1990s.
The upgrade is now widely expected to have doubled in cost, however — and the outlook is further complicated by the year-long paralysis of the Stormont regional executive in a row over Brexit trade rules. With £62.5mn pledged from the Northern Ireland executive and €15mn from the GAA, Gaelic games officials hope the joint Euro bid will unlock fresh funding.
“No one has waved any money,” said one insider. “But the commitment has been given that Casement Park will be developed by then.”
The leaders of the region’s five main parties have backed the Euro bid. But the Democratic Unionists, the main unionist grouping, which has boycotted Stormont for a year, says no extra public funding should be given since other stretched public services urgently need cash.
The UK-Irish bid faces a rival offer from Turkey. A decision is due in the autumn, when Uefa will also decide the host for the 2032 games.
Success could make Casement Park “the emblem of a new Northern Ireland”, said Joe Brolly, a well-known GAA commentator. Or as Ciarán McKernan, a former Antrim hurler, put it: “An awful lot of our community would go to see England [play a Euro 2028 match at Casement Park]. That would be another bridge crossed.”
