Farewell to my father: my hero, my inspiration

IF SPORT is about anything, it’s about heroes. I lost my all-time sports hero this week and applications for a replacement won’t be invited. Nobody could fill those boots.

He was the man who put a hurley into my hands as a child and tried for hours to teach me to take a sideline cut. He showed me how to approach a football at a time when you took free-kicks off the ground. When I got older, he brought me to Páirc Uí Chaoimh to watch Billy Morgan perform heroics in front of the Blackrock End and when I got my finger broken by a cowardly pull, he was the one who brought me to hospital.

He was a GAA man to the core, but there were exceptions. Decades before quarter of a million people saw Munster beat the All Blacks in Thomond Park, he and his brothers regularly travelled to Limerick to watch touring teams play rugby. Also lurking in his background were goals scored in Milltown and Flower Lodge, and despite loud disavowals, he was as proud of those as he was of two goals scored against Kerry in a Munster minor football final.