Cork county board secretary Kevin O’Donovan says that while “people will have misgivings” over the county’s recent sponsorship agreement with Sports Direct, he feels the positives of the deal outweigh the negatives.

In January, Cork GAA confirmed that Sports Direct would be replacing Chill Insurance as the county's main sponsor after a deal was struck for €2million over the next five years.

There has been criticism of Sports Direct owner Mike Ashely over treatment of his employees in the past but, speaking to EchoLive.ie, Mr O’Donovan feels there are too many positives outweighing negatives in striking a deal like this in the current climate.

“Context is everything,” he said. “If you’re doing commercial deals in the middle of Covid and having Rebels’ Bounty sending over a million back to clubs, I’d be saying, ‘Let’s look at the broad context here.’

“I do accept that our supporters will have criticisms of a lot of things we do and I’ll accept the criticisms of Rebels’ Bounty. We took it on the pitch, we solved that; we took it on the county championships, we think we might have solved that one and we’ll take it on Sports Direct.

“People will have misgivings but we look very much on Sports Direct as providing employment in Ireland. We’re in a relationship with Sports Direct Ireland.”

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