The project would have transformed part of the 54 hectare (133 acre) site just outside Lisburn, south-west of Belfast, into a shared national stadium for the province's three main sports - football, rugby, and gaelic football.
In another of his Hebridean poems, MacCaig commended the "seagull voice" of his Gaelic Aunt Julia, so rooted in the terrain of Harris that she came to think with and speak in its birds and climate.
It was entitled "Some Lewis Moorland Terms: A Peat Glossary", and it listed Gaelic words and phrases for aspects of the tawny moorland that fills Lewis's interior.
This impoverishment has occurred even in languages that have historically paid close attention to place, such as Irish or Gaelic.
Elliott points to a leaflet Sinn Féin distributed reminding nationalist voters that he caused controversy by stating that he would never attend a Gaelic football or hurling match – sports played in the main, though not exclusively, by nationalists and Catholics in Northern Ireland.
"They forgot to tell people that I have worked very hard with local GAA clubs to get them improved facilities and have backed many planning applications for gaelic clubs in the county," he says.
Tipperary and Dublin were playing a game of Gaelic football in front of a crowd of 5,000 people.
But their reaction took the form of emulation – they did for Gaelic football and hurling what the English were doing for other sports.
Gaelic itself is slowly withering: the number of native speakers in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd is now around 58,000.
Five feet two, brilliantly talented with a passion for drink and mayhem that would ultimately lead to tragedy, Hughie Gallacher established the blueprint of the diminutive, wayward Gaelic football genius.
The plan also had the backing of the Gaelic Athletic Association, which promotes gaelic sports.
