Peter McKenna on five big issues facing Páirc Uí Chaoimh

What about Páirc Uí Chaoimh's playing surface?

Peter McKenna: “That will have to be replaced. The surface is very unstable, as you may have seen earlier in the year, so we’ll have to do some fairly aggressive remedial work there.

“I think it should have started earlier and we may not have time to get it done because of the winter weather.

“If you’re importing turf from either Holland or Lancashire — the two main sources — that may be subject to frost in January and February, so we may be as well to keep the surface we have and do that work aggressively later, in 12-18 months’ time.

“The window is too tight this winter.

“Now, the synergies involved in working with Croke Park help; we have a farm in north Dublin which helps to grow pitches, so we’re in a closed loop in terms of supply.

Regarding Páirc Uí Chaoimh, there are compaction problems when you’re running cranes up and down the side of a pitch, drains get blocked and so on.

“It’s a bit like a teabag, the edges seal and water pools in the middle. This isn’t a matter of saying ‘you made that mistake’. These things evolve.

“We had teething problems in Croke Park too after the redevelopment, and a lot of the issues are once-off problems resulting from large-scale building work.”

Will all this materially influence team expenses and funding?

Peter McKenna: “Not at all. That’s a matter for the county board — but that’s where this problem was heading. There were massive debt and the stadium debt needed to be untangled from the county board accounts. The most important things are the teams, not the stadium.

“Looking at the stadium as a separate unit, which is now solvent, with the executive well represented on the board, is by far the best way to do it. “We need to have someone there running the stadium day to day.

“At the moment my team and I are doing it, but that’s not feasible long-term; an appointment needs to be made there. It’s not on the scale of Croke Park but it’s a significant business, and we’ll make that appointment in the next couple of months.

The relationship with Cork City Council needs to be looked at, certainly. We have a huge piece of civic infrastructure in the stadium, so we need a strong, positive relationship with the Council. It’s a symbiotic relationship which can be mutually beneficial.

"Also, we need to lift the branding. We have to make it feel red on every staircase, every corridor, every meeting-room. Team photographs, team colours. You have to know you’re in the heart of Cork GAA when you’re there.”

Is it Croke Park v Páirc Uí Chaoimh for concerts?

Peter McKenna: “The opposite is the case - what happens is we can bring far greater leverage to the music business than Cork could on its own. We can go to the Garth Brooks or whoever and say ‘three in Croke Park, two in Cork’ or whatever the deal is.

“Everyone wants to play Croke Park but not everybody can fill Croke Park, and there’s a big difference between 80,000 and 45,000 in terms of capacity. We’ll bat hard there - I don’t see it as an issue but the opposite, given the leverage we have. That applies across the board, by the way - to conferences, supplies, and so on. The buying power of Croke Park will work to Cork’s benefit.”

What about Stáid Cois Laoi and the running of the Páirc?

Peter McKenna: “We couldn’t bring the board of directors together in July or August because there was no clarity on the total out-turn.

“(GAA director-general) Tom Ryan and I went through this in detail — we couldn’t ask people to serve on a board if the company was going to be insolvent. That’s illegal.

“We needed to make sure there was a solvency solution, and that took a little time because there’s a lot of work involved, but we had our first meeting a few weeks ago.

“It’s a good board with the likes of John Mullins and Michael O’Flynn, both experienced guys and dyed-in-the-wool Cork supporters, John Murphy of Sligo and Tom Gray of Dublin, GAA president John Horan — who chairs the board, Ger Mulryan and I.

Cork chair Tracey Kennedy has been very supportive of us and early on she saw change needed to happen, that there was a downward spiral. She was instrumental in making this happen.

“At that first board meeting we laid out the problem, where the funding streams were going to come from, how we’re going to pay that down, so the company is now stable, albeit with a large debt.

“We’re working on a business plan, which will take some time.”

What happened naming rights for the stadium?

Peter McKenna: “That needs to be driven. Naming rights - first you have to take the philosophy involved.

“For instance, I don’t think we could sell naming rights to Croke Park - Archbishop Croke wrote the GAA Charter. To call it ‘Such-and-such Croke Park’ would be wrong, we’d have sold everything at that stage. County grounds are different and have availed of naming rights, but the important thing is to get something tied to the game. It can’t be parachuted in. A company was engaged a while ago but there wasn’t a whole lot of progress, so we’re involved in that process now.

It’s a courtship. You have to be conscious always of the downside. There were four stadia in Texas named after Enron, and when that company collapsed over governance issues there were huge problems.

“Bringing stability to the accounts means our bankers are comfortable. The vision is we need to make the stadium the signature place in Cork - for conferences, exams, weddings, everything. The big difference in Cork for me is that Páirc Uí Chaoimh is a place everyone talks about and wants to know about, far more than Croke Park in Dublin.

“The latter is a big part of Dublin but it doesn’t dominate the city the way Páirc Uí Chaoimh dominates Cork.”