Ask a New York cabbie, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” and they’ll invariably tell you “practice, practice, practice”.
With my collar pulled above the nape of my neck to shield myself from a sheet of the wettest Kerry rain, as I shuffled along the road between Killarney and Tralee before 8am on Saturday morning, I realised getting to Croke Park was a journey not dissimilar. But it’s more a case of thumb, thumb, thumb.
It started out as a journalistic experiment to gauge – as ‘The Recession’ casts a long shadow over our depressing summer – how cheaply one could get to Croke Park and take in one of the ever-present highlights of the season – the championship action.
And in doing so I was to cross the border from Cork, under cover of darkness, and join the Kerry fans’ winding their way to Dublin, and perhaps unravel one of the Association’s great mysteries – if it is a mystery – why Kerry supporters don’t travel before September. Like St Patrick crossing the Irish Sea to convert the masses, a Corkman, perhaps, needed to show his neighbours the way to Croker. Letters to the editor at sport@examiner.ie.
I was to do this by reeling in the years, to a day when the Celtic Tiger was but a cub and people stopped along the road to offer much-needed lifts to those thumbing on the highways and byways of our little country.
I was to achieve this though, deep behind enemy lines in the Kingdom, on the day their footballers played a much-anticipated All-Ireland quarter final against Galway in HQ, while wearing a Cork jersey. Read the rest of this entry »
