THERE are some weekends when my proximity to Croke Park is a blessing that I don’t take for granted. Toddling down to see Bruce Springsteen after dinner earlier this year, nipping over to catch Cork beating Down in the football final in 2010 … Glorious.
But it’ll be hard to top this weekend’s heroics.
It was seventy minutes of pure, unadulterated passion. Nothing was left out there. A performance for the ages. And I’m just talking about myself and Fachtna’s performance in the stands.
From our corner of the Cusack Upper, we lived and breathed every puck as Cork reignited the memories of summers past. It was 1990 all over again. As After All by The Franks rang out around the stadium, we realised we had the rare privilege of attending a classic for the ages, the game when Cork put a historic-defying Limerick team to the sword. I stayed in the stadium for an extra ten minutes at the end just to soak it all up. Magic.
I’ve spoken at length in this column about how it’s the hope that kills you with Cork GAA. But the hurlers have shown time and time again that they are capable of turning an average season into something golden.
So, for the moment, controversies over GAA Go and endless fussy fixtures are all forgiven. Standing there on a Sunday afternoon in a packed Croker, with a huge and vocal Cork contingent, I was reminded about everything that is glorious about our games. You literally wouldn’t get it anywhere else.
Now, any chance of a few tickets for the final?
A week is a long time ....
JUST as the hurling lurched one way and then another, in almost heart-stopping ebbs and flows, so it is with international politics. One week, we had Biden crashing and burning on TV and an imminent far right takeover in France, then the French voters made a dramatic swing left in the second round and we had a landslide Labour win in Britain to end 14 years of Upper Class Twit of the Year. I can’t keep up.
It’s fascinating if not a little exhausting.
There is a sense of relief and renewal with Starmer in place, the manner in which he has appointed his new cabinet and engaged with leaders in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales bodes well. Thankfully, we now have people in power in the UK who know where Ireland is on a map and have some understanding of our history. Always a help. Probably the best example of this is Keir Starmer’s elections guru and closest aide, Morgan McSweeney from Macroom, who has risen meteorically through the Labour Party and now faces a very tough challenge in helping drive the change that is clearly needed. Now that’s what you call senior hurling.
There will be a honeymoon period for Labour for sure, but the election results are a little misleading, and would suggest Labour are on a temporary pass from voters. They have not increased their percentage of the overall vote so the same divisions remain in the UK, with much of the battle to come on the right, where Farage’s Reform party have eaten the Tories lunch, for now. It’s a bit of an Eton Mess.
Labour can take their time to steady the ship while all this plays out, of course, but the problems within the UK are deep and systemic, with an economy that definitely isn’t on the up, a huge factor that helped Tony Blair in 1997 and beyond.
But there is something about Starmer’s attitude, the lack of pomp and his urgency to roll up his sleeves and get to work that makes me think great things are possible.
Bacon didn’t look too hot
ONE of the great things about our Gaelic games is that all the heroes who lined out for Cork on Sunday will return to real life and real jobs this week, back into the communities they represent, although I’m sure they will be shielded from the hype machine as much as possible.
I’m not sure how Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon would get on in such a scenario.
The star recently had a go at being a normal person by dressing up in prosthetics, donning fake teeth, a different nose and a pair of glasses, and took to walking around a shopping mall in Los Angeles called The Grove.
Ah, bless him.
Apparently he has wished for anonymity for many years and wanted to give it a go. The results were not good.
‘People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice,’ he said.
‘Nobody said, “I love you.” I had to wait in line to buy a f***ing coffee or whatever. I was like, this sucks. I want to go back to being famous.’
He’d never do in Croke Park on a hot Sunday, lads.
