The Cork-Roscommon ‘Super 8s’ game is to take place at Pairc Ui Rinn with the Pairc Ui Chaoimh pitch set to be ripped up next week.
Works by SIS Pitches will commence on the surface on Monday next with a Cork statement outlining that “the contractor has indicated that this start date is critical to achieving maximum grass growth and ensuring the availability of the pitch for all of Cork's home Allianz League games in 2020”.
The Cork-Roscommon game is due to take place 13 days later on Sunday, August 4 and may be reduced to a dead rubber depending on how the counties’ second round of ‘Super 8’s games play out this weekend.
The Pairc Ui Chaoimh surface has been much maligned since the redeveloped stadium was opened in 2017 and matters came to a head this year when the pitch cut up badly during an Allianz League double header.
It was subsequently closed for the remainder of the League but hosted Cork’s Munster SHC games against Tipperary and Waterford as well as the Cork-Kerry Munster SFC final.
The overspend on Pairc Ui Chaoimh has also been a huge bone of contention right across the GAA and the statement added that “the tender price has come in within the amount allowed in the €95.8m estimate of costs announced earlier this year”.
Cork chairperson Tracey Kennedy commented: “We cannot ask our teams and supporters to endure another season where our flagship stadium is unavailable to host the games it was built for, and it is absolutely critical now that we have a high-quality, winter-proof pitch available to host all of the inter-county and club fixtures that we wish to play at Pairc Ui Chaoimh each year. I am confident that SIS will provide that for us.
“I acknowledge and share the disappointment of many that our senior footballers cannot play their home All-Ireland quarter-final phase 3 game against Roscommon in Pairc Ui Chaoimh, and if there was any way in which the match could have been accommodated without risk to the future success of the new pitch, it would have been done.”
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