Cork has had to again accept its affairs would be better off run by Croke Park

A year before the IMF, ECB, and European Commission landed in Dublin, the GAA’s own equivalent of a troika was ready to bail out a besieged Cork County Board and its long-time secretary Frank Murphy, writes Kieran Shannon.

At the time, Leeside was in the throes of its third and most divisive strike of the decade, prompting Paraic Duffy, just a year into his role as GAA director-general, along with president-in-waiting Christy Cooney, to fly into town, sit down with the warring factions, and try to draft some kind of truce.