by The Feral Goat on Tue May 28, 2019 10:21 am
Late to post, but I went through for the match.
The game – Decent competitive match thought Glasgow left a couple of tries out there, one was a great tackle on DTH in the corner and the second, I think, it was Hastings dummied and ran instead of passing when 5m out. Leinster did what they always do, well drilled low error rugby leaving the opposition needing to take points every chance they get to beat them.
Stadium – Good for watching the match with steep stands and felt a bit closer to the pitch. But echo the comments on the drink queues/fan zone. Fan Zone felt like it was set to cater for 7k rather than 47k. Queues within the stadium and space around the retail outlets really poor, although I understand that some areas were fine with no queue where as I was 30+mins before KO, also thought there were not many toilets for a stadium of its size.
Appreciate Celtic Park is designed to get folk in and keep them in and apart, but even having the backpack beer folk would have helped. Things like the automated turnstile scanners worked well getting you in but again limit flexibility on how you get folk into their seats, if they could have had the exit doors open pre-match and more food and drink stalls on ground level I think queues could have been much reduced.
Clearly Celtic Park works for football and Murrayfield for rugby but given the requirements of each and fundamental design differences (eg at CP turnstiles on the stands, MF at the boundary) I find it hard to believe either can be made to work well for the other sport. It was great for Glasgow that c40000 fans turned out to watch rugby in the city especially with Celtic playing same day but I don’t think the stadium experience showed a day at the rugby at its best to any potential new followers.