Five points behind and the game looks up. Not that much time left and the lads seem to have shot their bolt. .Another defeat at the hands of the rebels looks on the cards. The Munster championship gone for another year. Have the lads got it in them for one last final fling. I look over at the mammy, and her eyes are closed and she making the sign of the cross on her forehead.

We are now into the time added on and we are still a goal behind. The play is about 25 metres from the Cork goal and the ball comes back out again, it looks as though our last chance is gone. But hold on the ref has blown the whistle and is giving a free in. Nobody seems to know what the free is for but its more than 20 metres out and dead straight in front of the goal.

This really is the last chance saloon!

Cork packs their goal as they wait for the free to be taken. Eoin Kelly stands over the sliothar and looks at the goal like a gunslinger of old. I look over at the Mammy and she still has her eyes closed and is mumbling to herself. Eoin bends lifts and he strikes,   the Sliothar is blocked and rebounds out from the goal, the last chance seems to be gone, but in the twinkling of an eye Tony Brown rushes forward and buries the ball in the rebels net.

It ends all square and were back to fight another day. I leave the ground linking the Mammy and her doing the little girlie step and skip  and clicking her heels, yahoo she looks forty years younger.  Then it’s back to where the car is parked to head for home.

We stop at Nagles in Kilsheelin n the way back and the Mammy has 3 large bottles and cheese and crackers and I just have 7up. We really enjoyed that apart from the local budding Tony O Reilly trying to sell the mammy another pup for the coursing.

little did he know the mammy is a regular visitor to Kilsheelin for the coursing and has put better dogs down than this yoke he was trying to sell her. No sentiment with the mammy, if they can’t pay for their keep with a few bob off the bookies it’s the lead behind the ear and the meat factory next stop!

When we got home I ask the Mammy why she had her eyes closed for the last minutes of the match, she said son I was praying to Saint Jude and he answered my prayers and got us a draw.

I never thought the Mammy was religious, but she told me that sometimes she prayed to Saint Jude. I asked her when was the last time she had a wish granted, she thought for a minute or so and said about 2 years ago when you were going with that one from Dublin that I didn’t like. We split up after she said me Ma was domineering, and doesn’t know her place.

So romance for me ended but I still have the Ma. We never died a winter yet as me granny used say. The two of us will be back in Semple Stadium next Saturday and Ma says she will say a decade of the rosary on the way up in the car on Saturday morning. 

The other bit of good news is that the world cup is over. The referee showed 14 or was it 15 yellow cards in the final, and yet no one was injured and they say that’s a man’s game. As Mammy would say men, men, you’d have to write on their foreheads.

Up the Deise