Sports Stadium

Sports Stadium was an Irish television sport programme on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). Broadcast between 1973 and 1997, it was RTÉ's flagship sports programme and one of its longest-running shows. It ran in a variety of slots, but in its final years aired on RTÉ Two on Saturdays between 1:00pm–6:00pm.

Its first presenter was Brendan O'Reilly who continued presenting into the 1990s. Other presenters during the show's run included Liam Nolan, Fred Cogley, Michael Lyster, George Hamilton, Peter Collins and towards the end of its run, Tracy Piggott was racing presenter before taking sole charge of the programme's short-lived successor Saturday Sports Live.

The format of the show was very similar to the BBC's Grandstand or ITV's World of Sport, and indeed Grandstand's racing coverage was often simulcast on the show, presented by Noel Reid before Piggott's arrival in 1994. The earlier part of each show would feature a mixture of racing and recorded highlights of other sports. The centrepiece of the afternoon for many years was a live 3:00pm Football League Division One game, which would be followed by the classified football results read by Brendan Delany, who was with the show from its start right through to its end.

Accra Sports Stadium

The Accra Sports Stadium, officially named the Ohene Djan Stadium is a multi-use, 40,000 all-seater stadium in Accra.Ghana, mostly used for association football matches.

Overview

Originally known as the Accra Sports Stadium, the stadium was renamed after Ohene Djan, the country's first Director of Sports, in 2004. Its renaming was quite controversial and opposed by many in Accra's community. There has been ongoing controversy about the name of the stadium. On June 16, 2011, the name 'Ohene Djan Stadium' on the stadium building was changed to 'Accra Sports Stadium' without any official announcement. It has since been reverted.

As a designated venue of some of the 2008 African Cup of Nations matches, the stadium was rebuilt, upgraded and modernized to meet FIFA standards. Work on the stadium was completed in October 2007. It was inaugurated with a four-nations tournament that Ghana won (the Zenith Cup).

The stadium is also the home of one of Africa's most popular clubs, Hearts of Oak as well as Great Olympics, but Ghana's national team matches are sometimes played there.

Accra

Accra /əˈkrɑː/ is the capital and largest city of Ghana, with an estimated urban population of 2.27 million as of 2012. It is also the capital of the Greater Accra Region and of the Accra Metropolitan District, with which it is coterminous. Accra is furthermore the anchor of a larger metropolitan area, the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), which is inhabited by about 4 million people, making it the second-largest metropolitan conglomeration in Ghana by population, and the eleventh-largest metropolitan area in Africa.

Accra stretches along the Ghanaian Atlantic coast and extends north into Ghana's interior. Originally built around a port, it served as the capital of the British Gold Coast between 1877 and 1957. Once merely a 19th-century suburb of Victoriaborg, Accra has since transitioned into a modern metropolis; the city's architecture reflects this history, ranging from 19th-century architecture buildings to modern skyscrapers and apartment blocks.

Accra serves as the Greater Accra region's economic and administrative hub. It is furthermore a centre of a wide range of nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels. Since the early 1990s, a number of new buildings have been built, including the multi-storey French-owned Novotel hotel. The city's National Theatre was built with Chinese assistance. In 2010, the Globalization and World Cities Research Network designated Accra a Gamma-minus-level world city, indicating a growing level of international influence and connectedness.

Stadium

A stadium (plural stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.

Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event at the ancient Greek Olympic festival was the race that comprised one length of the stade at Olympia, where the word "stadium" originated.

Etymology

"Stadium" is the Latin form of the Greek word "stadion" (στάδιον), a measure of length equalling the length of 600 human feet. As feet are of variable length the exact length of a stadion depends on the exact length adopted for 1 foot at a given place and time. Although in modern terms 1 stadion = 600 ft (180 m), in a given historical context it may actually signify a length up to 15% larger or smaller.

The equivalent Roman measure, the stadium, had a similar length — about 185 m (607 ft) - but instead of being defined in feet was defined using the Roman standard passus to be a distance of 125 passūs (double-paces).

Sport

Sport (UK) or sports (US) are all forms of usually competitive physical activity or games which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and skills while providing entertainment to participants, and in some cases, spectators. Usually the contest or game is between two sides, each attempting to exceed the other. Some sports allow a tie game; others provide tie-breaking methods, to ensure one winner and one loser. A number of such two-sided contests may be arranged in a tournament producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs. Hundreds of sports exist, from those between single contestants, through to those with hundreds of simultaneous participants, either in teams or competing as individuals. In certain sports such as racing, many contestants may compete, each against all with one winner.

Sport is generally recognised as activities which are based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with the largest major competitions such as the Olympic Games admitting only sports meeting this definition, and other organisations such as the Council of Europe using definitions precluding activities without a physical element from classification as sports. However, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. The International Olympic Committee (through ARISF) recognises both chess and bridge as bona fide sports, and SportAccord, the international sports federation association, recognises five non-physical sports, although limits the number of mind games which can be admitted as sports.