Lansdowne Road

Lansdowne Road is the name of both a road in Dublin, Ireland and a sports stadium located there. In international usage, "Lansdowne Road" generally refers to the stadium.

The stadium is named after the nearby road, which in turn is named after the Marquess of Lansdowne. Lansdowne is an area in the English county of Somerset. The Marquis was also the Earl of Shelburne, and nearby Shelbourne Road is also named after him.

Lansdowne Road is situated in the neighbourhood of Ballsbridge in the city's fashionable Dublin 4 area. It touches the River Dodder and is in close proximity to many fine Victorian redbrick houses.

The stadium, which is the world's oldest rugby union "Test" venue is the traditional home of both rugby union in Ireland and, since the eclipse of Dalymount Park, of football as well. It is owned by the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU), and has a total capacity of 49,250. However, competitive international football matches cannot use the entire capacity because the stands at both ends of the ground (North and South) are standing-room terraces. FIFA and UEFA both mandate that international matches be played in all-seated venues; this reduces the capacity of Lansdowne Road to about 35,000 for competitive football matches. The International Rugby Board does not impose this restriction on international rugby venues. For non-competitive international football matches (friendly matches), the FIFA/UEFA all-seated mandate does not apply.

In the IRFU grounds, Irish rugby and soccer international matches are played. The ground is also home to Wanderers and Lansdowne Rugby clubs. Leinster have also used the ground on a number of occasions when crowd size has meant their traditional home of Donnybrook is not large enough. In 1999 and 2003 Landsdowne road played host to the Heineken Cup final. Since 1990, Lansdowne has also hosted the FAI Cup Final The grounds have also occasionally been used for music concerts.

The stadium is set to be redeveloped by 2009 creating a 50,000 all-seater soccer and rugby stadium. The redevelopment of the stadium was finally announced in January 2004 at a cost of approximately €365 million; of this, €190 million will come from the Irish government, with the remainder paid by the IRFU and Football Association of Ireland.

It has been decided that soccer and rugby games will be played in the 82,000 capacity Croke Park while Lansdowne Road is redeveloped. Croke Park is the only stadium big enough in Dublin, and it belongs to the Gaelic Athletic Association, whose constitution until recently did not allow foreign games to be played on their grounds. In 2006, it was announced that Croke Park would stage two rugby internationals and three football internationals in 2007.

The stadium has some of the best and most convenient public transport links of any stadium in the world, as the Lansdowne Road station of the Dublin Area Rapid Transit rail system is adjacent to the stadium. In fact, the DART line passes directly underneath the West Stand.

In October 2005, a small fire in the north terrace put the terrace out of commission for all of Ireland's Autumn internationals. This meant that people who had travelled from as far away as Australia and New Zealand could not attend the match. The terrace reopened for the first game of the 2006 Six Nations Championship.

This article is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lansdowne Road".