Shit love ma x

Taking the turn from Mountjoy Square on to Gardiner Street was my next task. Then I heard it. I felt it. A vibration. A small beep. I pulled my phone from my pocket. The message was from my mother, or 'Me Ma' as she is listed. I'd only talked to her, half hoarse, heart beating quicker than it should have been less than an hour earlier. Just before I did I used the phrase 'hurling heaven' in a tweet. 

To say proceedings took a turn for the worse when the age old rivals returned for battle would be an understatement. An understatement of an understatement. I still hadn't negotiated the turn. Something needed to be written about what I had just witnessed. What would I call it? I read the message from the woman who gave me life. Three words and a letter I'm all too familiar with. 'Shit love ma x'. That'll do.  

I paid nothing for my ticket on Sunday. I sat five rows behind the Tipperary dug-out with my bride to be. We'd prepared chicken rolls earlier in the day. I wrapped them in as much tin foil (later to be swallowed in small amounts) as possible. Safely tucked away in her bag, alongside three apples and half a packet of chewing gum we stood at the bus stop. I was decked out in as much Premier paraphernalia as I could pull off for a man of my age. My chest pushed itself out as each car passed. The bus soon arrived. We got off just before the capital city's main thoroughfare. The pace quickened. Before long we were with our fellow supporters.

A quick pit stop for a couple of refreshing soft drinks, I kid you not, and we were on our way. I rang my supplier to thank him for the efforts he had made to furnish us with such a vantage point on a day that promised much.

The future of Tipperary hurling did their thing and we put our chicken rolls out of their misery. Tae, a bag of Tayto (the blue bag) to share and a Crunchie unevenly distributed between two accompanied our main meal of the day. We were ready. There wasn't long to go. We were ready.

After a half of hurling that would grace heaven itself the Munster champions were lucky to be going in a solitary point up. I said to as many people as I could that I didn't think my heart could take another half like that. I needn't have worried. As Tipperary disintegrated right in front of my eyes Kilkenny advanced to their seventh All-Ireland final in a row. A 19-point turnaround saw the Premier County succumb to their worst championship defeat in 115 years.

Still unable to make any sense of it we took another turn. This time from Westmoreland Street on to Fleet Street. The comfort of The Palace Bar awaited us. I wasn't long sitting when a man with a tear in his eye, a man I would come to know as Billy, turned to me and for the next hour we talked about what had just happened. About hurling. About the 'disaster', as he put it, that had just unfolded. He adapted the words of 'The Galtee Mountain Boy' and in doing so he sang 'Farewell to Tipperary hurling said the Galtee Mountain Boy'. You couldn't but sing along. And worry that he might not be far off the mark.

He wasn't around 115 years ago but he confided in me that he had lived in London for 50 years and was 80 on his next birthday. He said he lived for hurling, for Tipperary hurling in particular, and had resigned himself to never seeing a Tipperary man lift the Liam McCarthy Cup again.

That saddened me more than any of the bizarre tactics employed by the Tipperary selectors and players earlier in the afternoon.

He said he was at Munster finals in the 50s and spent his entire weeks' wages to make it to them. Money eh?

Things are tight these days too and many would have spent money the might not have had to be in the crowd on Sunday afternoon. At half-time I would have paid as much as I could pull together to see another 35 minutes like it. In the end heaven turned to hell.

I hope Billy makes it to another hurling decider. I hope I'm sitting beside him or near him. I hope he accepts the pint of Guinness I'll buy him in The Palace Bar afterwards. We live in hope.