If McGrath rolls dice the Déise faithful may follow

Shortly after my wife and I took up a pair of seats about four rows from the back of the covered stand in Cusack Park last Sunday, I could hear a young fella behind me asking his father: Is that Tony Browne?

He must have got the nod anyway because moments later I felt two knees going into my back. And there they pretty much stayed, wedged into my fifth lumbar vertebrae, right through the minor match and all the way up to Maurice Shanahan’s goal about 10 minutes into the senior game.

Any time I pushed back, the knees came straight back in! It was like ’98 all over again — the Clare lads getting stuck into me before a ball was ever thrown in!