Where other sports are merely games

EMERGING FROM the blizzard of white and blue that is Waterford these days, we thought we’d give an ear to a couple of the natives and their thoughts on the game ahead of the All-Ireland final, the two men quoted above.

Sean Dunne was a gifted poet who worked for this newspaper before dying tragically young in 1996, still in his thirties. His name as a poet rests on collections like The Sheltered Nest, but he also wrote a lovely, lyrical memoir of growing up in Waterford in the fifties and sixties.

The eagle eye of the poet is much in evidence when it comes to selecting details of childhood, and his father’s love for Erin’s Own GAA club is sketched vividly. Dunne senior contributed club notes to the Waterford News and Star, and his son recalls him turning an image over and over his head: “The players were buzzing like bees around a honey-pot – how does that sound?”