British & Irish Lions
• British & Irish Lions tour Australia in 2013
Ireland Rugby
Eddie’s Got a New Home!
Peter McKenna (stadium director, Croke Park) has told Ireland Rugby Coach Eddie O’Sullivan:
“We don’t want you to feel like a guest – this is your home.
“It’s a philosophy we try to engender – if it’s a group of nine-year-olds coming in to tour the museum up to county teams and international managers, we want to make people feel welcome, to feel that this is their day.
“It was important to say to Eddie, ‘we don’t want you to feel like a guest – this is your home. Whatever it is that makes your job easier, tell us and we’ll do it for you’.
“I compare it to a hotel and an apartment. If you book a room in a hotel everything’s laid on, food and drink, and everything’s clean and should be fit for purpose. When you rent an apartment you can paint the walls and put up posters – for all intents and purposes you’re the owner while you stay there.
“For us this is a hotel arrangement – we have huge obligations to deliver on the expectations, but at the same time we’ve also kept a degree of control of the facility, in the build-up and during and after the games.”