Henry’s missed chance to take up mantle
Henry took up the mantle, tried it for size, wondered if it wasn’t a small bit tight around the shoulders, put it down again and returned and stood by the bank of the Nore. And waited for another day out. For Henry is many things but not, I suppose, a prophet.
But Christy, on whom the mantle still sits just right, would surely have seen it, had been written. Or simply wrote it himself.
Just this May, in these pages, Donal O’Grady organised his own changing of the guard.
“If you went back far enough and you needed a goal to win a game from a 21-yard free, then you’d ask Christy Ring. In the modern game you’d want a fella who has done it all, and I’ve never seen Henry Shefflin’s nerve let him down.
“He’s the guy I’d want.”
There is that moment they’ve told me of many times in these parts. The announcement. Christy in Croke Park for the first time, just 17. Minor final. No mantle, just the civvies of a right-half back.
Cork two up late on when the free presented itself. The point a sensible premium on an insurance policy. Not Christy’s business either way. Until he dashed from his station and put the matter to bed with a blast to the net.
A first chapter penned.
Henry, mind you, can still decide how this one has been written.
Whatever happens, you suspect there are enough mantles to go round.
