Limerick gripped by All-Ireland hurling final ticket frenzy

LIMERICK is in the midst of a ticket frenzy ahead of next Sunday’s All-Ireland hurling final at Croke Park.

GAA clubs in Limerick are reporting two and three times the requests compared to their ticket allocation.

All 66 Limerick GAA were informed of their allocated tickets over the weekend and as always there will be no public sale of tickets for the All-Ireland SHC final.

Croke Park’s attendance next Sunday for the first ever All-Ireland SHC final meeting of Limerick and Cork will be 40,000. That is up from the semi final attendance of 24,000.

However, there are a lot more demands on tickets for All-Ireland final day.

For starters there are corporate boxes and premium level seats which could account for anything up to 7,000 tickets for next Sunday.

That would leave no more than 33,000 but not all that will come as a 50-50 divide to Limerick and Cork as there is an allocation of tickets to every county in Ireland and there are also the varying demands at national GAA level.

All in all, it is understood that the Limerick County Board allocation was around 1,500 more than the semi-final.

Before tickets reach the clubs, Limerick have a list of responsibilities that must be met. All former All-Ireland SHC winners, Railway Cup winners, current Limerick senior and U20 hurlers, current Limerick referees, current inter-county managements and a host of county board sub committees all get an option to purchase a ticket.

Limerick also have corporate sponsors, while John Kiely’s players and backroom staff also get the option to purchase tickets.

All in all, the allocation to the clubs across Limerick are just slightly less than 50% of what they got for the 2018 final, when the capacity was 82,000.

As a basic, every Limerick senior hurling club got 110 tickets, intermediate hurling club 88, junior 76 and football only clubs got 59.

Extra tickets were added to each club’s allocation with a sliding scale used to determine the extra figure depending on their numbers in the Club Limerick Draw and if they have players on the 35-man Limerick senior hurling panel for Sunday’s final.

There was some unrest among Limerick supporters with some of the belief that 2020 season ticket holders in Cork were offered the chance to purchase a final ticket.

However it remains unclear if this offer was open to 2020 season ticket holders or those who are 10 year ticket holders in Cork.

Stand tickets for the August 22 final are €90 and Dineen Hill 16 tickets €50.