The 16th man
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!
“The house belonged to a fella named Taffy, his sister needed a few quid, rented the house out to Tony Cooney from Kilfeacle, but he told her they’d be only seven in it. The worst thing Tony did was give out the address - Fairy Cormack; all of us there and Pedals Ryan from town laid out on a couch the same as if he was laid out in Tom Fogarty’s funeral home in Tipp town, with a towel over him. We didn’t see a dinner from the time we left on Thursday until we got back home to the bacon and cabbage”.
Johnny Luby is President of Kilfeacle and District RFC, a junior club in rural Tipperary, and a breakaway from Clanwilliam which is based in Tipp town, now its most bitter rivals. This is his story of that weekend, told in his own inimitable style, with a few diversions thrown in for good measure.
“The way it happened in our house, Munster had qualified and we were talking about going. Herself works in the bank and she was saying we couldn’t afford it. We had a young wan getting married in November, Siobhán, that was going to be expensive, but the young fella pipes up, (Shane — he’s going to Rockwell, on the Senior Cup team though he’s eligible again next year), ‘Well I’m going anyway!’ Then the other lad, (that’s Gerard, he’s going to college in Limerick, UL, doing PE and Maths; he’s a back row, a fairly intelligent rugby player and that’s the way the game is gone; it used to be about using your brawn, now it’s about using your brain), joined in, ‘I’m going as well’!
“What could I do? ‘If the two of them are going,’ I said, ‘Then I’m going, and that’s that.’ Shortly before the final I met a girl from Golden and I said, ‘How’s your mother keeping?’ ‘Fine,’ she says, ‘She’s living over in Bristol now and I’m going over to see her on Saturday week.’
I said, ‘It’s an awful pity you’re not going next Saturday because Munster are playing in Cardiff,’ I says, ‘We could all go over together’.
“And didn’t she do it! She has seven boys and they all play rugby here, the eldest is 15, the youngest are five and seven; she put a couple of them into the back of a kind of pick-up van, I had my two lads, and off we went, down to Rosslare, took the boat over. A rough, rocky crossing, I can tell you, the storms were desperate that particular weekend, though we were lucky enough, we were on the big ship, it wasn’t as bad.
“I wasn’t very well versed in travelling by boat, usually flew to these games. There was a chap on the boat from around here I knew very well — Bertie Tobin, he went straight to the office, said to your wan he wanted to book a cabin, and she gave him the keys of room 15. I didn’t know you could do this, but I had only £40 in my pocket anyway. We all went to the bar, had a few drinks, but I went back down to the office — ‘I’m after losing my keys,’ I said, ‘What cabin?’ — ‘Number 15!’ She gave me a new set of keys — your man had to sleep on the floor.
“‘I’ll never forget that bloody Munster match,’ he told me afterwards, ‘Some hoor got into my cabin and wouldn’t let me in!’ Sure ‘twas me, and he knows now who it was, but I’d always be up to that sort of thing. He took it in the right spirit anyway.
“I love going to these sort of sporting occasions — anywhere there’s a bit of craic. I’ve been to Wimbledon to the tennis, to Wembley for the Derby, to Royal Ascot, the whole bloody lot — there was the time I decided to go to Cheltenham. Flew over, a one-way ticket — I reckoned I’d be bound to meet someone from Tipperary who was after driving over, could come back with them.
“A brother-in-law and myself, we were picked up at home by a fella who was working for him, driven to Dublin Airport in his Mercedes — an ould one now, mind you! — got the flight to Birmingham, taxi to the train-station, train to Cheltenham, taxi to the Racecourse. It was only half-nine in the morning so we got in for nothing, it wasn’t open for business yet — a marvellous set-up altogether.
“Inside I met Jim Burke — he’s involved with the rugby-club here — I said to him, ‘How did you come over?’ ‘Drove,’ he said, ‘With my brother.’ ‘Christ,’ I said, ‘Meself and the brother-in-law are looking for a lift home.’ ‘No bother,’ he said.
“We travelled back with Jim, he dropped me at the fourpenny-road cross; the young wan was after leaving her bike there, so I got up on it, cycled home.
“But that was some trip, every mode of transport you could think of!
“We got over anyway, arrived into Bristol about five o’clock in the morning, and she drove us back into Cardiff. We got there about two hours later, arrived into The Yard Bar, trenched in there for about two days. That night, the Friday, about two in the morning, the young fella says to me, ‘Where are we going to stay?’ ‘It’s alright,’ I said, ‘Somebody will open their mouth very shortly in this bar’.
A while after, Tony Cooney, one of the lads in the club here, said to a fella, a brother-in-law of his, ‘Will you get a taxi? We’re staying in 13 Ormonde Square’.
‘Now,’ I says to the young fella, ‘Haven’t we a place to stay?’ ‘Are we going?’ he says. ‘No,’ I said, ‘Say nothing now, only wait, give them a chance to get to bed’.
“Eventually, when I was going out the door, I met a couple of more lads from the rugby club here, with no place to stay — ‘Come on,’ I says, ‘Stay with us.’ Down we went to Ormonde Square, number 13, opened the door like you’d open the door here at home.
“Two rooms; 23 people ended up sleeping inside. There was only one bed, three fellas inside in it, everyone else thrown all over the floor. There was about 12 inches left on one side of the bed and I claimed that, squeezed myself in, about four o’clock in the morning. And Jesus, about half five didn’t I wake up, dying to go to the toilet, but I was afraid to get up or I’d lose my place. So I held out anyway ‘til half-six, when I just had to go. And I woke everyone up, went in and shook them. ‘Get up!’ I said, ‘This is a great day, Munster in a European final! Get up, we’ll all get taxis into town, make the most of it.
“The house was owned by a fella who used to play rugby with us here one time, Taffy was his name. He rented the house out to Tony Cooney, but he didn’t know there’d be 23 of us sleeping there! I ordered the taxis anyway, ‘Where to?’ says the taxi-driver — ‘Straight to a restaurant,’ I told him.
“We walked in, a big crowd inside already even though it was only half-seven, your man comes over with a menu. ‘We don’t need any menu at all,’ I says, ‘I’ll tell you what the order is now — 23 pints and 23 scrambled eggs on toast’!
“We sat down, a few French fellas over in a corner wanted to hear ‘The Fields of Athenry’ — ‘God we’re not Fields of Athenry men at all,’ I said, ‘Nothing to do with us, we’re Seán South from Garryowen men!’ We lifted them out of it anyway with a few verses of Seán South. Unbelievable.
“Then we went on down to the Yard Bar.
“The Yard was THE place to go, a huge place, only 500 yards from the Millennium Stadium. They had a yard that would be bigger than the rugby field outside, the best part of 2,000 people in there. They were there from Cork, Waterford, Kerry, Clare, Limerick and Tipperary, fierce craic.
“I was doing ould fictitious commentaries on the match; ‘Denis Leamy has the ball, going for the line, and the screams can be heard all the way back to Slievenamon. ‘Lads,’ I’d say, and turn around, ‘Where’s me fucking chorus!’ And next thing we’d have a blast of ‘Slievenamon’.
“Around two o’clock anyway, someone said to me, shouldn’t we be leaving for the stadium? ‘Jaysus,’ I said, ‘I don’t know will I bother me arse at all, the craic is mighty here!’ Eventually though I decided, after coming all the way from Golden, getting a lift, going to all the rounds, I’d better go! I did, never enjoyed anything like it.
“Back to the Yard again afterwards, and to hear the Cork lads singing, the Waterford lads, the Tipperary lads — Beautiful City, My Home by the Lee, Slievenamon, My Lovely Rose of Clare, and Kerry of course, the Rose of Tralee.
I met Nicky English, he said to me it was the greatest sporting occasion of his life. Jaysus Nicky, I said, ‘87 in Killarney, the Munster final, we’d waited 16 years — ye didn’t know what that was like, for the supporters. That was THE day, for Tipperary hurling, but I had to agree, that day in Cardiff nearly surpasses the whole lot.
“We had every kind of lad there, came from every direction, every form of transport, lads who flew into London, Birmingham, came by car, by bus, by train. We had lads from Rosegreen who were never at a rugby match before in their lives, but they all wanted to see Munster playing. It was unbelievable, the whole thing, brilliant too for the Heineken Cup, that Munster eventually won.
“We had such a crowd at the final, but they were the one team that lifted this whole competition. Everywhere Munster play, they bring the crowd with them. Even in Cardiff recently — there’s a stewards’ enquiry now on how nearly 7,000 Munster fans got tickets into the Arms Park.
“We stayed going ‘til about 3am Sunday morning, then got the sailing again, were in Fishguard at about eight, got the boat to Rosslare. I rang home anyway, my first correspondence in about four days, and I said to herself — you’d want to be putting on the bacon and cabbage fairly rapid, I have six or seven in the car! We got home about three o’clock, that was it.
“I’d be fairly emotional, but it really got to me that night when they went back to how the cameras linked up the fans in Limerick with what was happening in Cardiff, it showed what it meant to those who didn’t go, who probably couldn’t go — it probably meant more to them, in a way, than it did to us, because we were enjoying the live experience of it.
“Even if Munster win it again, this year or whenever, there will never again be a craic like it. I’m a supervisor with FÁS, but if Munster hadn’t won, I was going to change me occupation to psychologist, because I reckon the whole of Munster would have needed therapy! Fellas would have been shattered. This was a must-win game.
“People talk of Stringer’s try, but the memory I have of that day was Paul O’Connell, six foot six, and the tears streaming down his face. Paul played against us for Young Munster in a Junior Cup final in 1998. What hope had we? A fantastic guy, but to me, this was Munster through and through, the players are as much Munster as the supporters, and it shows.
“I think it was Moss Keane who said, everyone wants to be the 16th man; if Denis Leamy was to get injured, Jaysus I’m ready to go on, even if I am 62 years of age! In a way, that’s what we are, all of us, the 16th man”.
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