There’s nothing to match the magic of Munster final day

Yesterday in Thurles was my first time involved in a Munster final since I captained Clare in the 1999 decider against Cork.

I had a green and white top on my back as coach to the Limerick minors. We suffered a narrow and disappointing loss but the buzz of Munster final day still surged through my veins like a narcotic.

We all had long faces as we sat down for the senior match but the mood began to lighten as the Moycarkey-Borris pipe band began to tune up for the parade. I was sitting beside Joe McKenna. ‘Joe, we’ll be dead long enough,’ I said to him, ‘but they can never take this off us. It’s some magic moment’.