How stadium gigs saved Páirc Uí Chaoimh and kept Cork GAA afloat

Croke Park may be counting the cost of losing Garth Brooks’ gigs, and the massive cash injection of sellout concerts that once proved the salvation of Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh, which shuts this weekend for a massive €70m redevelopment.

Sunday’s Munster hurling final between Cork and Limerick is the final provincial GAA decider at the stadium which reopened in a blaze of publicity back in 1976. But leading GAA officials admit the weight of bank borrowing and interest payments at the time almost sunk Cork GAA.

“We weren’t solvent at one point,” Cork GAA secretary Frank Murphy admits in a special commemorative magazine on Páirc Uí Chaoimh, published with tomorrow’s Irish Examiner. “In one instance our bank interest commitment for the year exceeded our entire income from our county championships by £35,000. In 1980 alone, the amount of interest to the bank was £170,995.”