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Mary Hannigan: Will Euro 2028 be nothing but woolly promises and prime corporate guff?

Minister weighs in on Euros funding, demon bugs in France and Ireland sweat on James Ryan’s fitness

The Aviva Stadium will play host to Euro 2028 games with Ireland's joint bid with the UK left as the sole option remaining for Uefa. Photograph: Donall Farmer/PA

Mary Hannigan's face
Mary Hannigan
Thu Oct 5 2023 - 10:29

It’s not that Malachy Clerkin isn’t chuffed about Ireland (and England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) winning the bid to host Euro 2028, unopposed as it was after Turkey withdrew from the process. It’s just that he’s dreading five years of “woolly promises of lasting legacies” when it’s much more likely that the tournament will merely give us “a few fun days in the sun”. That legacy talk, he writes, his pencil well and truly sharpened, is “prime corporate bullshit, the sort of catch-all guff that organisations wave around when they have nothing specific to point to.” So, if the FAI and, indeed, government ministers, intend spending the next five years “trumpeting their Euro 2028 bonanza”, they’ll need to be specific. Otherwise, Malachy will be coming for them.

Already, the association is claiming that the tournament will be worth €241 million to Ireland, although as Gavin Cummiskey points out in his Q&A on the whole business, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe has expressed some scepticism about “the financial models underpinning” the bid.

France’s hosting of the 2023 rugby World Cup is going swimmingly thus far, aside from Johnny Watterson being confronted by a chihuahua with crooked teeth and bulging eyes, and an Asian Tiger mosquito “bloated with dengue and Zica”. These insects are, he tells us in his World Cup diary, so big “you can feel them land”. Good God. You could certainly feel Paul O’Connell land back in the day, Johnny hearing Scotland forwards coach John Dalziel reminisce about the times he came up against the fella. Gerry Thornley, meanwhile, brings some worrying news ahead of Saturday’s meeting with Scotland in Paris, James Ryan now a doubt for the game with a wrist injury. Tadhg Furlong is in fine fettle, though, and looking forward to the “Parisian Celtic derby”.

There’ll be no shortage of galacticos on that pitch on Saturday evening, although Ciarán Murphy wonders, in Gaelic games at least, can you have too many of them? He’s thinking of Limerick’s Patrickswell in particular after they had two players named as Hurler of the Year nominees last week. When they’ve been away on intercounty duty for the bulk of the year, how do you fit them in to your set-up towards the business end of the club championship?

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And in his America at Large column, Dave Hannigan reflects on the night 27 years ago that rapper Tupac Shakur attended his friend Mike Tyson’s WBA heavyweight title clash against Bruce Seldon in Las Vegas. Hours later, Shakur was dead. A man charged earlier this week with his murder.

TV watch: Four years after the drama of their World Cup cricket final at Lord’s, England and New Zealand meet in their opening match at this year’s tournament in India (Sky Sports Cricket from 8.30am). There’s lots of Europa League action on today, Marseille v Brighton and SC Freiburg v West Ham two of the 5.45pm kick-offs, with Liverpool v Union Saint-Gilloise and Aston Villa v Zrinjski Mostar squaring up at 8pm (Virgin Media and TNT Sports). And there’s rugby World Cup action too in the form of New Zealand v Uruguay (RTÉ 2 & ITV4, 8pm).