When the old P\u00e1irc first opened its gates 50 years ago with a blitz of Munster finals \u2013 a couple of seismic Cork-Kerry clashes were followed by another Cork-Limerick decider in hurling \u2013 its initial contract price of just under \u00a31 million had skyrocketed to \u00a31.7 million. Interest rates were a frighteningly punitive 16%. The interest due in 1980 alone was \u00a3171,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a chastening time,\u201d Murphy recounted. \u201cIt was scary stuff, a matter of survival. Essentially we weren\u2019t viable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was adamant that upon commissioning another redevelopment at the site of the old Athletics Grounds, history shouldn\u2019t repeat itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m conscious of the legacy that will be left to the successor in this office, that this cannot be an albatross around Cork GAA\u2019s neck into the future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
By Murphy\u2019s estimation the cost of the new P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Chaoimh would be \u20ac70 million, which would be fully covered by funds from the government, Munster and Central Council and the board\u2019s own kitty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have taken a conscious decision \u2013 though GAA headquarters are still wondering about it \u2013 there will be no bank borrowing on the redevelopment of the stadium.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
GAA headquarters\u2019 scepticism, though, was justified. Within a fortnight of Kevin O\u2019Donovan assuming Murphy\u2019s role in December 2018, Croke Park had been called in to bail out the stadium that ultimately cost \u20ac96 million; as O\u2019Donovan himself would lament a few years later, \u201cPredictions that the stadium would open debt-free now seem like a distant memory.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And if it wasn\u2019t the debt that was embarrassing the county board in those early years, it was the pitch. Only a couple of months after Croke Park\u2019s intervention, and just 18 months after the facility had opened in the late summer of 2017, the playing surface cut up during a national league double-bill featuring both senior county teams. The only other senior games played in the stadium that season were the Munster football final and the hurlers\u2019 two home games in the Munster championship; everything else was relocated to P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Rinn as the pitch in the new stadium was resurfaced and resolved once and for all.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5108340_7_articleinline_887259_1_.jpg\" "\\"The")
The 2014 Munster SHC final was a fitting send off for the old P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Chaoimh. Pic: Brendan Moran \/ SPORTSFILE<\/p>\n
Even as recently as Cork\u2019s first home league game of 2024, Donal \u00d3g Cusack spoke for a considerable constituency within the county when describing the redeveloped venue as a \u201chuge millstone that\u2019s been left around Cork\u2019s neck\u201d, and even compared the venue to \u201csome couple\u2019s home where they have a nice front room but don\u2019t have dinner on the table.\u201d His stance was essentially the same as it had been a decade earlier \u2013 he\u2019d have much preferred a centre of excellence to develop Cork teams, not \u201ca monument\u201d to simply host them.<\/p>\n
But now, on the eve of it hosting its first Munster senior hurling final involving its own team? It all feels so different. The idea of Cork not having a stadium that size, that grand, to house its hurlers and supporters seems archaic, impractical even.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just Cork GAA that has been enhanced by the stadium\u2019s majesty. So has the GAA itself. Often a televised GAA match can look small-time with the backdrop of empty terraces and a sea of stone or plastic; even last weekend\u2019s thrilling Monaghan-Mayo game in Clones suffered from such an aesthetic. When the action is coming to you from an inevitably-packed P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Chaoimh, it radiates atmosphere. Big-time. International, even.<\/p>\n
For that, Murphy can be forgiven, even if the debt he failed to foresee won\u2019t. Vision rather than vanity informed his decision and drive to rebuild the P\u00e1irc.<\/p>\n
But in a way the house he built has been haunted \u2013 in the best and most colloquial sense of the term. The round-robin provincial championship that guarantees so many home championship games for Cork was only passed months after the new stadium opened. If it wasn\u2019t for that response to \u2013 and greatest legacy of \u2013 football\u2019s Super 8s, it\u2019d be much harder to justify such an outlay when Munster was already hardly short of stadia.<\/p>\n
Under the old format and in the old P\u00e1irc, the place by the summer was mostly somewhere other counties played, not Cork themselves, bar the footballers\u2019 biennial home clash with Kerry.<\/p>\n
After Brian Corcoran\u2019s debut year of 1992, which remarkably featured three home Munster championship games (including one against Kerry), only two of Cork\u2019s following 19 Munster championship games were in P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Chaoimh \u2013 the 1996 and 2001 first-round losses to Limerick; all bar one of the others were either in Thurles (10) or the Gaelic Grounds (six). The 2005 Munster final was only Joe Deane\u2019s third senior championship game at the venue, even though by then he was in his 10th year on the team. Tipp\u2019s Brendan Cummins was playing his 17th senior championship game there.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a whole new ball game and ballpark now. Sunday will mark the 14th championship game that the Cork hurlers will have played in the new P\u00e1irc. That\u2019s the same number as they played in the old P\u00e1irc from 1992 to 2014, and just eight less than the old P\u00e1irc afforded them in the 39 seasons it was open.<\/p>\n
The real step-change has been in recent seasons. Cusack\u2019s \u2018couple\u2019s front room\u2019 remarks came in February 2024; up to then Cork had been averaging crowds of \u2018only\u2019 31,680 at home championship games in the new P\u00e1irc and just once in their seven games had its attendance exceeded 36,800. At that point you could have argued that the stadium should have been downscaled to a 30,000 capacity, saving the board tens of millions and years in debt. But then that summer that 36,800 watermark was reached for a narrow loss to Clare. With the Pat Ryan era on the line, over 41,670 swelled into the P\u00e1irc on a Saturday night for a magical win over Limerick.<\/p>\n
Since then every home championship game has been a sellout, as was the 2025 league final. Even their home round-robin league games over the past two seasons the crowd has never dropped below 19,500. The great Cork team of 2006 in their pursuit of a third consecutive All-Ireland could afford to play all three of their home league games that season in P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Rinn. Going for the league and going to see the team in the league just wasn\u2019t a thing on Leeside back then. Now it\u2019s all the rage, going to see a hurling team the whole county is proud of playing in a stadium it is similarly now proud of.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unfortunate that it has yet to have an outstanding football moment to share with the Cork public the way the old P\u00e1irc had Tadhgie Murphy\u2019s goal in \u201983, Dinny Allen\u2019s in \u201988, and all the wins against Kerry there during the career of Anthony Lynch. The nearest thing was Mark Keane\u2019s goal during covid but the place was deserted. John Cleary\u2019s team have obviously decided that they\u2019re better off making P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Rinn a cauldron, and their home at this point in time; even with the county now returning to Division 1, it\u2019s unlikely \u2014 bar a Munster final against Kerry \u2014 that they\u2019ll be playing any home games anywhere else.<\/p>\n
![\"Cork](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5108343_7_articleinline_3054350_1_.jpg\" "\\"Cork")
Cork GAA CEO Kevin O’Donovan. Pic: Ramsey Cardy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n
And of course the new P\u00e1irc has one other glaring deficit \u2013 its debt. O\u2019Donovan has been able to restructure it whereby as of last year they owe Croke Park (approximately \u20ac18 million) more than the bank (roughly \u20ac12 million) that will be repaid by 2048. It is still a millstone for the board, especially O\u2019Donovan.<\/p>\n
But the Cork GAA public itself no longer carries or feels that weight. For all the downsides there are to county board meetings no longer being accessible to the media, it has helped the collective mood that the stadium\u2019s debt only generates headlines annually at county convention rather than every month.<\/p>\n
There is still a question \u2013 being pursued through the courts \u2013 as to why the stadium\u2019s costs overran significantly, but also an appreciation and even relief in light of the Casement Park and national children\u2019s hospital fiascos that it was built when it was built; a 43,500 capacity stadium for \u20ac96 million would be some bargain now.<\/p>\n
SuperValu could further activate its generous sponsorship by helping create an even greater matchday experience outside the venue. The local authorities, having had a few more years to see just how much the stadium has enriched the city, could surely do more to facilitate rather than block the board\u2019s plans for a museum and visitor centre on the premises.<\/p>\n
But overall it\u2019s working. O\u2019Donovan has regularly allayed concerns like Cusack\u2019s that the stadium\u2019s debt would impede the preparation of county teams. \u201cThere is nothing going to fill that stadium faster than an All-Ireland winning senior Cork hurling or football team,\u201d he\u2019d tell me in 2021. \u201cAnd there\u2019s nothing to turn that debt around faster than a full stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n
Again and again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We can now say that it has been worth it. Every cent. Even though it\u2019ll take nearly another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[177329,2110,1965,72371,1964,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-485899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-championship-2026","tag-cork-sport","tag-hurling","tag-munster-gaa","tag-cork-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}