The Leinster Council has defended its decision to fix next summer's Leinster SFC quarter-final between Dublin and the winners of Laois-Wicklow for Nowlan Park.

The provincial body has come under fire for choosing the Kilkenny venue over Portlaoise, with Laois county board claiming they offered to take a €40,000 hit by waiving their right to ground rent in order to host the Dubs on June 4.

"We will review how this works out at the end of next year, but feeling was that Nowlan Park would be better able to accommodate the fixture because it had more seats," Leinster Council chief executive Michael Reynolds told the Irish Times.

"The smaller the venue and its facilities, the less room for manoeuvre you have with concession tickets.

"There are some venues with capacities as low as 7,000 or 4,000. The resulting loss of revenue would have a knock-on effect on grants and many counties wouldn't agree to that."

Tweet

Most Read Stories