This weeks #FloodlightFriday comes to you from Ireland with issue 2 of a general Irish League fanzine Head The Ball dated February 1989. To say it has such a niche subject it’s a pretty good effort, very enthusiastic and strident and with a good range of articles.

The leading article in Head The Ball is about the loss of two famous Irish league grounds during 1988 with another being saved. Horror of horrors the Gaaaa have outbid Cork City for the wonderfully named Flower Lodge ground where apparently the Cork Alberts played for a few years. Look up the Gaaaa today and the internet suggests it could be the Global Airline Alliance Adherence Agreement or Georgia Alliance of African American Attorneys or even the Great American Aran Afghan Along which is apparently a knitting group. I’d love it to be that last one but I’m pretty sure it was actually just the GAA and our author was just very mad about things. As this is the floodlight blog let’s get right to it though.

Can you see it? Look, its bloody obvious in this sensational photo.

Here are a couple of more recent photos showing more detail of the foodlights and proving that it has companions.

That lovely old floodlight is now soon to be gone, this week it was finally confirmed that the Dayler, “saved” in 1988 with the promise of redevelopment, is to finally meet its maker. Multiple development attempts have failed in the intervening 38 years and the only solution is to raise Bohemians famous stadium to the ground and start again. The floodlights are said to have once adorned Arsenal’s Highbury ground and Arsenal were the first opponents under the lights in 1962.

The wiki about the Dayler (parts of which were designed by Archibald Leitch) contains what is probably an incomplete history of all the times there have been ‘firm’ plans made in the years since this article raised hopes. Wonderfully it is full of stuff like “in 1999 the “Jodi Stand”. was built replacing the 90-year-old wooden stand and at the time was meant to be phase one of the redevelopment of Dalymount Park.” with the rest phrases such as “Half of the terrace on the opposite side was knocked down” plus “the remainder had seats installed on the terracing and held 3,720 but has no roof cover” and “which limited its use until it was closed for health and safety reasons in 2011” and includes “The old Shed End, is now called The Des Kelly Carpets Stand” and “The Tramway End has been sold and is also therefore closed, leaving the ground with only two operational sides, and a capacity of just 4,227”

It’s not a great story for a ground that has hosted multiple Irish Cup finals, the first fixture for an Irish tram in the European Cup and sundry international fixtures. The record crowd for the ground is “estimated’ to be between 45,000 and 48,000 for a World Cup qualifier vs England in 1958. You can read all about the redevelopment here. https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026/07/22/dalymount-63m-redevelopment-moves-forward-following-scaled-back-construction-plan/

That word “estimated”..well elsewhere in the zine is a frightening description of what happened in 1985 for a World cup qualifying tie vs World Champions Italy as well over 40,000 tried to cram into a ground. A safety review after this set the ground capacity at 22,000 and lately its been reduced to 4,443 (why they don’t just round these numbers down a bit is beyond me, 4,440 makes more sense!)

A truly frightening account of what happened that chaotic night. It’s just another sad example of hideous overcrowding and cack handed handling by the Police and football authorities on the British Isles. At least in Ireland they didn’t ignore all of the warnings and reduced the ground capacity drastically.