{"id":345605,"date":"2026-03-14T08:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T08:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/345605\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T08:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T08:22:08","slug":"council-staff-suspended-over-alleged-pitch-watering-at-shamrock-rovers-ground-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/345605\/","title":{"rendered":"Council staff suspended over alleged pitch watering at Shamrock Rovers ground \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Dublin County<\/a> Council<\/a> (SDCC) has suspended three staff members after it received a complaint that the pitch in Tallaght<\/a> Stadium was watered despite heavy rain, leading to Shamrock Rovers\u2019<\/a> first home match of the season being called-off. <\/p>\n

The Tallaght Stadium is owned by SDCC, and Shamrock Rovers \u2013 the reigning League of Ireland<\/a> champions \u2013 are the anchor tenants of the 10,500-seat arena. <\/p>\n

It is understood that SDCC\u2019s investigation and the suspension of staff from its public realm division followed a complaint from the club after CCTV was reviewed. <\/p>\n

Shamrock Rovers was due to play a televised match against newly-promoted Dundalk on Friday, February 6th in Tallaght Stadium before the game was called off due to a waterlogged pitch. <\/p>\n

Rovers played the postponed match on February 23rd, with the game finishing 1-1. <\/p>\n

The alleged watering of the pitch took place during one of the wettest Februarys on record in Dublin with Dublin Airport experiencing the heaviest rainfall ever<\/a> seen during the month.<\/p>\n

Since the staff were suspended last month, the council have employed a private contractor to provide pitch maintenance services at the stadium. <\/p>\n

A source familiar with the investigation said it was seeking to review the devices of staff to check their communications before the match was called off. <\/p>\n

Shamrock Rovers declined to comment. <\/p>\n

SDCC said it has no comment to issue \u201cat this time\u201d after a series of questions were put to it earlier this week. <\/p>\n

The Football Association of Ireland said: \u201cThe League of Ireland are currently reviewing a complaint received made in relation to the postponement of Shamrock Rovers v Dundalk in the SSE Airtricity Men\u2019s Premier Division on Friday, 6 February 2026. <\/p>\n

Upon receipt of this complaint, the League of Ireland has engaged with Tallaght Stadium and Shamrock Rovers and will provide further information if appropriate after this process.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Dublin County Council (SDCC) has suspended three staff members after it received a complaint that the pitch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[13446,61,60,2539,11113,13357,112,13356],"class_list":["post-345605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-football-association-of-ireland-fai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-league-of-ireland","tag-shamrock-rovers","tag-south-dublin-county-council","tag-sports","tag-tallaght"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}