GAA President John Horan has defended the decision not to accommodate the Cork football and hurling teams in Croke Park this weekend.
Cork supporters who want to go to both the Super 8 SFC clash with Dublin on Saturday and the All-Ireland SHC quarter-final against Kilkenny will have to fork out to stay in the capital or make the long trek on both days.
Horan said that it was simply unfortunate but nothing could be done. "It would've been more desirable if you could put them together," he said.
"But when you talk about the Cork supporter, the Cork football supporter will be a different cohort to the Cork hurling supporter.
"The guy that bridges both, these things are unfortunate.
"It's positive from a Cork point of view that they're doing so well but you just can’t fit everything in.
"If you were trying to put three fixtures on a Sunday, where would you put a Dublin-Cork game? Are you going to put it on at 12 o’clock to get them all in? That’s the unfortunate thing."
Horan added that it was a healthy and safety issue that the capacity of Fitzgerald Stadium for Kerry's sell-out home Super 8s clash with Mayo on Sunday was reduced from 37,897 to 31,000.
"Health and safety rules are not governed by us, but they are rules we have to deal with," he said.
"Even when you see the matches in Newbridge, there is an awful lot of spare capacity in the ground but the real problem there is the figures called access and egress and you have to match them. That creates the problem.
"It's not just a simplistic thing to say you could just put 38,000 people into that stadium, you have got the access, you have got the egress.
"You have the availability of a curtain-raiser that will allow greater numbers accessing the ground. I would say that a curtain-raiser could be a problem in Fitzgerald. A makey-up curtain raiser was not going to solve the problem.
"You need one that fits in. But going forward, our relationship with Ladies football is such that there are the possibilities of Ladies football matches being used as curtain-raisers, I think there was one in Limerick last weekend (the Connacht final replay)".
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