An ambitious €15 million facility in Curraheen is one of the main elements of UCC’s new sports strategy.

Morgan Buckley, UCC’s director of sport and physical activity said yesterday:

“In parallel with our other work on the strategy we carried out a feasibility study on our facilities and we’re well behind in certain areas. We have world-class indoor facilities in the Mardyke Arena but our outdoor facilities aren’t fit for purpose. I’m being up front to the governing body — we’re going to have a real problem for the next four years.

“We face the prospect of reducing some of our facilities in the Farm as the new science and technology park takes shape — we’ll lose two to three pitches there. This year we’ve been renting pitches for our GAA teams where we can get adequate lighting.”

The famous Mardyke playing field is under serious pressure, said Buckley.

Our pitch in the Mardyke is used 200 times a year. We have a fantastic ground staff, led by Willie Fahy, but 200 times a year is a pounding. It’s remarkable there’s still grass there.

"Take a wet autumn and 200 uses in a year, and the likes of Dr Con Murphy, Dr Paddy Crowley, and John Grainger are saying, rightly, that our facilities are out of date.

"We’ve reviewed what we can do with the Mardyke but until the Cork flood relief scheme is sorted out our hands are tied. We looked at development with Pres and so on, but ultimately we’re going to focus on Curraheen, out by the Munster Agricultural Society.”

Buckley pointed out UCC owns the land in Curraheen and plans to develop a major training and outdoor sports complex on the site.

“It’ll be our destination, UCC Sports Park is our current title for it but we’ll look to bring in someone on naming rights.

“It’ll be our primary training facility for rugby, soccer — we have 14 soccer teams, while our nine hockey teams use one pitch at the moment.

“We’re losing players because we can’t facilitate everyone who wants to participate. It mightn’t sound ideal, going all the way to Curraheen, but in real terms it’s only two minutes further out the road than the Farm.”

Buckley said the WIT facility in Carriganore was a good model for UCC:

“In UL, there are new pitches — two GAA fields which can be doubled into four soccer pitches — and that’s what we want.

We’re looking at a development in Cork which would have natural and artificial surfaces for Gaelic games, soccer, hockey, and a centre for coaches.

“A good model would be the Waterford IT location in Carriganore.

“There’s quite a bit of work to be done in terms of bringing the final proposal forward, but we’ve secured funding of €15m in secured European investment bank loans. We’ll need to find a further, substantial amount of money, but we’re working with the university on that.”

Buckley added that Curraheen forms part of a broader plan:

A new UCC sports park, sporting club and sports participation programme are among the key initiatives of our ambitious sports strategy launched this morning.

More: https://t.co/bRouErX5eK#SIOB @UCCSport @MardykeArenaUCC pic.twitter.com/35l2FrdftN — UCC Ireland (@UCC) February 27, 2019

“We’ll look to develop our rowing facilities at the mouth of the river in partnership with Pres and the City Council, as part of the marina development — so you’ll have the Skull and Crossbones at the mouth of the river, the Mardyke along the river itself further upstream, and the pitches, and from then out to the state of the art sports park out in Curraheen.

The timeframe for building is five to seven years — we’ll finalise the business model for the facility this May, go for planning permission in midsummer and everything then depends on permission.

But we’d hope to up and running with the work in the next three to four years.