It may have been nervous relief, but John Murphy saw a funny side to the near-death experience he endured after being hit by a giant wave near Bantry Bay.

Now you see me, now you don’t — what photographer Adrian Cronin witnessed on the battered shores of Bantry Bay was like a scene from tsunami drama The Impossible, a scene replicated around a storm-clobbered coast.

IN the early months of 2009, staunch Nenagh Golf Club members, Paddy Heffernan and Seamus Hogan, began to plan an assault on the Bulmers All-Ireland Bruen Shield.