Finding perfect haven
They headed down to Killarney and afterwards marched right through it and its heaving streets, Billy Morgan having told the bus driver to head off, that they were going to soak up every ray of sunshine and every cheer and backslap after walking under the yoke there for more than a decade. As Bomber Liston told reporters that evening, the circus was over, the guard had changed, a Bastille had been stormed.
There was something else Bomber noted about that day which years later over a pint he’d tell Larry Tompkins. The previous Sunday, Tompkins, in only his second game for Cork, scored an injury-time free down in Páirc Uí Chaoimh to bring the Munster final to a replay in Killarney. Tompkins had never before played in Killarney; didn’t know its quirks, its dimensions, had no relationship with its posts. So on the Thursday morning himself and his great buddy from Castlehaven, Christy Collins, hopped in the car, Christy having put a call through to one of the town’s and Kerry GAA’s great personalities, Eddie ‘Tatler’ O’Sullivan, enquiring if he and Larry could borrow the keys of Fitzgerald Stadium for a few hours.
