In 1947 the soccer-playing branch of the Cork Ancient Order of Hibernians decided they needed a proper ground. They paid 5,800 pounds for 11.5 acres at Flower Lodge, a former big house on the south side of Cork city between Ballinlough and Ballintemple, and set about building. The committee raised money the way Irish sports clubs did in the 1940s and 1950s - lotteries, football pools, and fundraising dances at the Cork City Hall. Joe Loss and Victor Silvester, two of the bigger dance-band leaders of the period, came to play. An English ground expert was hired. A Cork firm laid the pitch with an elaborate drainage system - the kind of detail that mattered on heavy ground in a wet country. The first competitive match was played in February 1957, when Sligo Rovers beat AOH 1-0 in an FAI Cup tie. AOH then changed their name to Cork Hibernians and entered the League of Ireland that same year. They moved permanently to Flower Lodge in 1962.

Cork Hibernians ran Flower Lodge for almost two decades, with the high point in 1970-71 when they won the League of Ireland championship - a Cork title that came only twice in the entire history of senior soccer in the city. The European nights brought big visitors to Flower Lodge. In September 1970, Hibernians played Valencia of Spain in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In 1973-74 they faced Baník Ostrava in the European Cup Winners' Cup. They also won the FAI Cup in 1972-73, beating Shelbourne 1-0 in a replayed final played at their own ground. When Hibernians folded at the end of 1975-76, the lease passed in turn to Albert Rovers, Cobh Ramblers, and the newly formed Cork City - who played their first two League of Ireland seasons (1984-85 and 1985-86) at Flower Lodge before moving across the river to Turner's Cross. The greatest crowd ever to see a soccer match at Flower Lodge was probably the 1971-72 Cork Hibernians versus Waterford fixture, when an estimated 26,000 squeezed in.

During the Big Freeze of January 1963, England's football pitches were unplayable for weeks - the country went into a frost so deep that the FA Cup third round was completed in early March. With nothing to do, Manchester United, Bolton Wanderers, Coventry and Wolves brought their idle teams to Flower Lodge for a series of friendlies. In one of them, Manchester United beat Bolton 2-0; Johnny Giles scored; Paddy Crerand made his United debut. Twelve years later, on 28 December 1975, the most famous footballer in the world walked out at Flower Lodge in the wrong shirt. George Best, signed by Cork Celtic in the autumn of his career, made his League of Ireland debut against Drogheda United. Celtic moved the game from their usual home at Turner's Cross because they expected a crowd Turner's Cross could not hold. Roughly 12,500 turned up; Celtic took home over 6,000 pounds in gate receipts. Best lasted only a few matches in Cork before drifting off again. But for one afternoon, Cork had the most famous footballer alive on a pitch in Ballinlough.

By the late 1980s the Ancient Order of Hibernians wanted to sell Flower Lodge, and there were two interested parties. Cork City F.C., the new League of Ireland club, wanted the ground for soccer. Cork GAA wanted it for hurling and football. The GAA approached the sale carefully - using three different sets of solicitors to make two anonymous bids, the better to disguise both the seriousness of their interest and the depth of their pockets. They bought the ground in 1989 for somewhere between 240,000 and 260,000 pounds, using money raised by two Michael Jackson concerts at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in July of that year. Soccer in Cork had lost its main venue. The GAA renamed the ground Páirc Uí Rinn after Christy Ring, the Cloyne-born Glen Rovers hurler whose career - eight All-Ireland medals, eighteen Munster medals, two centuries of Cork jerseys worn between 1939 and 1963 - made him the most decorated hurler in the history of the game. The redevelopment took four years and cost close to a million pounds. The reopening on 23 May 1993 was marked by two challenge matches - Cork against Kilkenny in hurling, Cork against Meath in football.

Today Páirc Uí Rinn is Cork GAA's secondary venue - the place where the county hurlers and footballers play their National League fixtures in spring before championship season at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. It is the regular home for Cork's senior camogie team in the All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship. Floodlights, installed a decade after the reopening, were first used on 1 February 2003 when Cork played Kerry in a Football League game under lights for the first time. The capacity is 16,440 - the main covered stand seats 5,200, with two terraces holding a further 8,400. During the redevelopment of Páirc Uí Chaoimh between 2015 and 2017, Páirc Uí Rinn temporarily promoted itself, hosting senior championship games against Limerick, Clare, and Dublin. Fifteen hundred seats were moved across from the older stadium for those fixtures - and never moved back. The lights, the seats, the modern access - it is Cork GAA's working ground, the place where the senior team trains and tests itself before the big championship Sundays. Christy Ring would have approved.