{"id":595805,"date":"2026-08-17T07:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T07:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/595805\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T07:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T07:52:16","slug":"irelands-football-pitches-have-turned-to-barren-dusty-ground-in-the-summer-heat-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/595805\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s football pitches have turned to \u2018barren, dusty ground\u2019 in the summer heat \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

What was once a soft, green grass pitch has become \u201cbarren, dusty ground\u201d at the home of Castledermot GAA club in Co Kildare<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This summer\u2019s long dry spell was particularly unkind to many sports clubs across the country as facilities suffered due to a lack of rainfall amid record-breaking temperatures.<\/p>\n

Club chairman Aidan Byrne said the harder ground this summer was \u201cabsolutely\u201d a concern compared to previous years.<\/p>\n

He said the state of the club\u2019s pitch had hindered playing conditions, saying, \u201cI know from speaking to other clubs they\u2019re experiencing it too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Byrne said a number of players from the under-16s girls\u2019 team recently made comments at training that stones were starting to appear in areas once covered by grass.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe dried-out pitch on the grounds of Castledermot GAA <\/p>\n

As a result of hardened conditions, the injury list this season has doubled on the senior men\u2019s team. Nine players have been sidelined while four or five suffer from long-term injuries as training plans are being amended to prioritise player safety. <\/p>\n

At an underage level, parents have been \u201cmore reluctant\u201d to send their children to training on hot evenings.<\/p>\n

Byrne said the club \u201chave to consider the possibility of all-weather infrastructure\u201d in the face of a changing climate, but first \u201cyou have to consider the cost of it all\u201d.<\/p>\n

For facilities to receive any significant upgrade \u201cyou\u2019re talking in the millions\u201d, Byrne said.<\/p>\n

He said the Kildare GAA board \u201ccouldn\u2019t be more supportive\u201d of clubs during this time, but it was an \u201cunprecedented\u201d situation.<\/p>\n

\"GrassGrass soccer pitches have dried out and turned yellow at St Anne’s Park in Dublin. Photograph: Alan Betson \"TwoTwo footballers practise on a dried-out grass GAA pitch at St Anne’s Park, Dublin. Photograph: Alan Betson \"WalkersWalkers on a dried-out grass pitch at St Anne’s Park, Dublin. Photograph: Alan Betson <\/p>\n

Gerry Gorman, site manager for the North Eastern Football League, said he has \u201cnever seen it as bad\u201d when it came to dry pitches that otherwise \u201cwould\u2019ve been a top-class surface\u201d.<\/p>\n

The league is home to more than 50 soccer clubs, predominantly located in Co Louth<\/a> and Co Meath<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gorman said soccer pitches in Navan<\/a> in particular \u201creally took a hammering\u201d during the prolonged warm weather over the summer.<\/p>\n

Although the football was still running, the ground had become \u201cvery hard\u201d and organisers of the league were now \u201cunder pressure to get the pitches in good shape\u201d before a number of important finals in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n

Met \u00c9ireann<\/a> analysis found that July was one of the hottest, driest and sunniest months on record.<\/p>\n

Ireland received barely a sixth of its average rainfall for July. Some places recorded just over 1mm of rain for the entire month, Met \u00c9ireann said in its climate statement for July.<\/p>\n

Temperatures over summer have consistently reached up to the high 20s, with the May temperature record broken twice on the same day on May 26th when temperatures reached 30.5 degrees.<\/p>\n

Ian McGill, chairman of Ballyboughal GAA club, Dublin, said the lack of rainfall had \u201cimpacted us, no question\u201d, but it was becoming a familiar issue to sports clubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last three or four years this has been a growing challenge\u201d for clubs as pitch conditions have become \u201cmore hardened than you\u2019d like\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways there\u2019s less maintenance, but that\u2019s not a good thing\u201d as it is due to the reason that \u201cnothing is growing\u201d, McGill said.<\/p>\n

Junior teams took a break for the summer, but senior teams have found the conditions \u201chard to train under\u201d, McGill said, as the championship season gets under way.<\/p>\n

Dr Suzanne Kelly, a GP based in Ballincollig, Co Cork<\/a>, said sports injuries \u201cdefinitely are increasing\u201d this summer compared with previous years from what she has seen.<\/p>\n

Sports equipment, including football boots that lack cushioning, is not designed to brace the impact on drier, hard ground. This causes \u201ca lot of bone and joint stress\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to get concussed more easily if you\u2019re hitting a rock-hard ground,\u201d said Kelly, who is deputy medical director of the Irish College of General Practitioners<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Broken hands, when players try to break their fall, and cut knees were also among injuries that could happen on the hard grass surfaces.<\/p>\n

She said she was constantly providing advice on general wellbeing regarding hydration and specific times for exercise to prevent patients from heat stress or fainting, which one of her patients recently experienced while playing golf.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all my years I\u2019ve never had a summer in which I\u2019ve been giving this advice so consistently,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What was once a soft, green grass pitch has become \u201cbarren, dusty ground\u201d at the home of Castledermot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":595806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46,615,4183,61,60,48748,3770,9689,15949,1191,42208,43,3405,18335,15950],"class_list":["post-595805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork","tag-dublin","tag-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-college-of-general-practitioners","tag-kildare","tag-louth","tag-meath","tag-met-eireann","tag-navan","tag-news","tag-soccer","tag-weather-events","tag-weather-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595805","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=595805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/595806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}