It’s still going to be called Páirc Uí Chaoimh, of course. Or, if you’re in Cork, still just The Park. A fortnight-worth of hot air and garment-rending isn’t going to change very much in the world. There’ll be signage up on the stadium wall and there’ll be a defined, reliable income stream into the coffers of Cork GAA. But really and truly, who’s going to say the words SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh? Are you?
There’s an old episode of The West Wing where a pollster is trying to get the president to run on a platform of officially making English the national language of the United States. The staff argue over and back on it. The guy’s contention is that fighting for it will guarantee re-election – it’s classic red meat to appeal to the heartlands. President Bartlett’s staff argue back that it’s not inclusive, that it will alienate the Hispanic vote, that it is, at its heart, just a little bit racist.
It all comes down to a chat in the Oval Office, late in the episode. The president throws the question to a different pollster, Joey Lucas, who ends the argument with a very typical West Wing flourish. “Apart from it being bigoted and unconstitutional,” she says, “it’s ludicrous to think that laws need to be created to protect the language of Shakespeare.”
[ Páirc Uí Chaoimh deal with SuperValu to be worth €2.5m over 10 yearsOpens in new window ]
So it goes with Páirc Uí Chaoimh. You, fine citizen of the land, you have free will to call the big bowl down by the marina anything you damn well please. For most of our lives, we called it nothing other than that awful kip below in Cork. Never mind SuperValu – you couldn’t have got Sellafield to put their name to it for the majority of its existence.
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Now it’s a big shiny box with all mod cons and everything you’d want out of a modern stadium. Okay, apart from proper transport links and a location that won’t put half the counties of Munster off from wanting to travel to it, granted. But once you’re there – as a full house will be this weekend for the Munster v Crusaders rugby match – Páirc Uí Chaoimh is a delight.
Such a delight, in fact, that one of Ireland’s leading supermarket chains is finally willing to pay money to be associated with it. This is a revenue stream, remember, that the Cork county board consistently made clear they were chasing from the beginning. That it has taken a full seven years since the place was reopened to get a naming rights deal signed tells you just how little leverage Cork had here. Make no mistake, this is a good news day in the GAA’s biggest county.
Into the bargain, it has probably served as a decent test case for the rest of the country. Because if we can say one thing for sure, it’s that the association has plenty of this in its future. County boards all around the country generally posted healthy surpluses in 2023 – only six made a deficit. Every county has to source its own commercial revenues, do its own fundraising, get what it can from Croke Park and forge on into the future.
But the cost of living in the GAA is only going to rise as that future comes to meet us. The intercounty money sponge soaks up more and more weight by the year. In the recent preseason football tournaments, some counties took to putting out second teams in the official games while their first-choice panel was off playing a challenge match away from prying eyes. That means, in some cases, counties are feeding and watering and paying mileage for the makings of two panels, at least for a time.
The stadium belongs to Cork GAA people. They should – and will – call it whatever they please
That’s before they do the same for a panel of hurlers. And before they do it for under-20 and minor teams later in the year. And before, most crucially of all, they eventually do the same for their female equivalents when amalgamation happens in the coming years.
People are going to need to be a bit more grown up about the realities, you’d imagine. And to remember too that all the intangible things like tradition and legacy and culture require a job of work to be kept alive. If they’re important to you, great. Make them important. Don’t wait for anybody else to do it. And don’t imagine that a sponsor can take it away from you at the stroke of a pen.
That was the part of the whole farrago that didn’t quite hold water. For all the caterwauling over the apparent desecration of Pádraig Ó Caoimh’s name when the original deal was going to call it SuperValu Park, how painful was it, really? What effort, after all, had there been over the years to make Ó Chaoimh a living figure in the history of Cork GAA?
You can nearly be guaranteed that more people have gone reading up on who he was in the past fortnight than in the previous 40 years. If Ó Chaoimh is such a venerated figure, maybe Cork GAA ought to do more than just sticking his name on a stadium. Build a cultural centre. Make his grave a tourist spot. Start a summer school in his name. You could do a million things to keep his name alive, if that’s what you want to do.
You don’t need laws to protect the language of Shakespeare. And you don’t need to go crying to Liveline every time a commercial partner gets involved with the GAA.
The stadium belongs to Cork GAA people. They should – and will – call it whatever they please.
