Michael Moynihan

There’s one big difference in the trip to Tipp now if you’re going to Tom Semple’s field for a match and that’s the road (and we don’t mean Cormac McCarthy’s terminally depressing novel, now being made into a film with Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, trivia fans).
Anyway. En route to the Limerick-Waterford game up in Semple Stadium last Sunday we realised we missed a few things from the old trip.
Kilbehenny where the three counties meet, the long stretch through the fantastically-named village/townland/state of mind Skeheenarinky, that funny little place with the toytown roundabout . . .
Some things we don’t miss. No-one really laments the departure of Fermoy from the route to or from Thurles. Over the years how many of us wished we could get back the hours stuck outside the town on the banks of the Blackwater? How many of us contemplated throwing ourselves in when we realised the bridge wasn’t even mid-point in the entire jam?
One other thing that’s been striking in the last few trips we’ve made to Thurles is the constabulary, or the general absence of same: in our voyage to Cork-Tipp we spotted a lone Garda looking bored on the motorway near Mitchelstown, not entirely focused on filling his summons book.
Early days yet on all counts. No doubt in time to come the various long sweeps and curves of the new road will become as familiar as the last stretch before that hard left at Horse and Jockey.
In the meantime, is anyone going by the old route or is it ghostly and deserted? Is there e’er a hold-up in Kilbehenny these days, with drivers tempted by the Three Counties Inn?
And if someone beeps their horn going past the deserted garage in Skeheenarinky, does anyone hear the sound?