After an electric night at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, what's next for the people's stadium?
OH WHAT A NIGHT: Munster’s Antoine Frisch takes to the field. Pic: INPHO/Ryan Byrne
WHEN Cork’s Páirc ui Chaoimh stadium waited this long to host a Munster rugby match, it seems a tad impolite to ask what’s next, but such was the frisson down the Marina Thursday night, one feels a sense of obligation to the future.
Streaming crowds converging from trafficked byways, dazzling floodlights, the hum reeked of occasion. On another hemisphere, they watched, impressed as a buzzed-up Munster bounded into a 14-point first-half lead courtesy of Cork’s Daly and Zebo with a helping hand from Tipperary’s Barron.
A Páirc sell-out for games outside its charter no longer resides in the realm of potential. The reality for the visit of a South Africa XV was loud and intoxicating and the possibilities stretched out like a line of limousines before Munster Rugby and the GAA in Cork.
The stark, cold numbers? The visiting South Africans might have trousered the thick end of €275,000 but the Boks were the sprat to catch a mackerel. Cork GAA’s take for pushing back the double-doors on their €96m headquarters was in the region of €150,000 but the future possibilities are infinitely more beguiling.
The idea of ‘other sports’ at Cork’s premier sporting facility has been in the mixer for years. Leading businessman Michael O’Flynn – who confronts obstacles like a suited CJ Stander - pushed the envelope for the Liam Miller testimonial at the Páirc in 2018 but more focused discussion on bringing Munster to the stadium only accelerated in the past six months.
With the southern hemisphere triumvirate all up this side of the world in November, a representative side from New Zealand or Australia was mooted before the conversation was steered by wise counsel towards the reigning world champions.
Central to those conversations were Munster’s Operations director (and de facto deputy CEO) Philip Quinn and Cork GAA chief Kevin O’Donovan, who has been inching membership along the road towards maximising usage of the stadium from the moment he stepped into the role four years ago. Speaking of ‘truly bringing this venue to life in a united fashion’, he has needed to be conscious too that it is ‘the people’s stadium’.
“That is your field,” he told his delegates at his maiden convention.
It is difficult now to look beyond Thursday night with anything but relish but both Quinn and O’Donovan are careful when they address the opportunities ahead; Quinn needs to mind Limerick and their Thomond Park home, his Cork GAA counterpart must balance the need to service a €20m-plus debt with match schedules in his constituency.
"We will have to take it a step at a time from our perspective," Philip Quinn said before kick off. "From our point of view, we are focussed on successfully staging a game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and what the future holds, nobody knows. There are always opportunities where we have had to move games out of Thomond Park due to tournament regulations and, if that opportunity arises in the future, we would look at coming back to Páirc Uí Chaoimh - or other stadia around the province."
Kevin O'Donovan chorused: "Our focus is a spectacular sell-out crowd in front of an international tv audience. Of course, we will look at it on a case-by-case basis from this point forward, be it concerts, be it other sports, be it any major event -- we are open for business here, on a case-by-case basis."
In their submission to the GAA’s governing Central Council to green-light the venture, O’Donovan spoke of the exceptional significance of the proposal, and warming quickly to the theme, Munster carved a delightful try from their first excursion into South African territory, Frish offloadng to Haley who found Shane Daly for the run-in. Around the ground, they nudged each another in the ribs and agreed wordlessly that this was exceptional alright, both in nature and significance.
THERE were also a series historic firsts at Páirc Ui Chaoimh, not least in the attendance itself of 41,500 – the largest crowd for a rugby game in the province of Munster.
Of course, it might have been greater – the new stadium capacity at Cork GAA headquarters is 45,000, so where were the missing three and a half thousand for the visit of South Africa?
One suspects for that, we need to go back to the teeming stands and terraces of Roy Keane, Man Utd and Celtic at the sell-out Liam Miller testimonial in September 2018, and consequent discussions between the safety authorities on access, egress, vomitaries and the appropriate use of same. Those conversations have continued sporadically and the hope is that Thursday’s night runaway success – even the rain circumvented Ballintemple for a while – will help edge the capacity northwards towards 45,000 for future games of this magnitude.
Much like Munster in Cork, for one of Leeside’s favourite sons, the future brims with possibility. It was perhaps good fortune that Ronan O’Gara was in London this week to babysit the Barbarians ahead of Sunday’s exhibition against an All Blacks XV at Tottenham’s one billion pound home.
In an interview with The Times, O’Gara reiterated his fondness for a future coaching in the international test arena, possibly with England. With his old mucker, Scott Robertson on loan from the Crusaders to help O’Gara pamper the BaBa’s, it wouldn’t take a sleuth to imagine the shortlist to replace Eddie Jones forming in the mahogany panelled walls of the RFU at Twickenham.
If their favoured option might be Leicester’s Steve Borthwick, the persuasiveness of a Robertson or an O’Gara – or both on the one ticket – makes it clear that Conor O’Shea and his compadres will not be short of strong, contrasting options if/when Jones takes his leave after next year’s World Cup in France.
How all that sits with Vincent Merling, the owner of O’Gara’s La Rochelle, is intriguing in itself. If he can keep himself out of the LNR’s disciplinary chambers, O’Gara’s hand is a strong one when contract renegotiation comes due.
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