The 16th man

JOHNNY LUBY first came to national attention on May 22 this year, when he rang Des Cahill on the Sports Call programme on RTÉ1.

It was the Monday after Munster’s Heineken Cup win in Cardiff, with fans recounting varying tales of how they journeyed to Wales, the amazing things they saw and did there outside of the game itself.

Then, as the programme wound down, Cahill invited Johnny to give a flavour of his experience — and this is a flavour; “I went over with another man’s wife, her two children and my own two. Twenty three of us slept in two rooms in a small house about two miles from the city centre. Cllr Joey ‘Small’ Dwyer from Tipp town was with us, he reckoned there was an issue of health and safety — the socks were desperate, we hadn’t a change of clothes on us, we had nothing, but by God we had a good time!