Tony Leen: Chances are Pádraig Ó Caoimh would have seen the Valu in Páirc deal

There are irrefutable financial realities: Cork GAA might have the shiniest façade in town, but it can’t afford to hang the curtains much less pay its way out of the suffocating debt

SELLOUT: Páirc Ui Chaoimh was packed for the visit of South Africa to play Munster. There aren't enough of these occasions, however, to grease the wheels. 

PADDY O’Keeffe – Pádraig Ó Caoimh in the current context – manoeuvred his way out of enough tight corners as first, a civil war volunteer, and later, a GAA official, to be comfortable wearing the badge of an arch pragmatist. For that he was.

When it came to planning a 1947 All-Ireland football final at New York’s Polo Grounds, there were enough logistical and bureaucratic hoops to jump through to dissuade the most ambitious pioneer, but Ó Caoimh methodically met and dealt with every hurdle. Travel and communication impediments remained, but the general secretary of the association – whom Cork GAA proudly named their HQ after – saw beyond restriction to the real prize, an opportunity to move the Gaelic football showpiece to a global stage. This was no flight of fancy. If his fundamentals were ever in the dock, witness a decade later, his and the Association’s vision for every GAA club in the country to have its own patch under the terms of the ‘Grounds Plan’.