Larry’s final ‘humdinger’

Larry Tompkins can still feel the hairs on his neck spike as sunlight bathed the tunnel leading to the pitch and a wall of noise was just seconds away.

It wasn’t an All-Ireland final, nor was it a Munster final. Castlehaven against Skibbereen attracted over 25,000 people to Páirc Uí Chaoimh on October 9 for the 1994 Cork SFC final and Tompkins felt his knees go weak.

“Those are the types of games you’d always remember,” he laughs. “Playing with the Haven was nearly more pressure than playing with Cork and people would be looking at me when I’d say that but that county final had as much pressure as any game I’ve played. The rivalry was seriously intense between Skibbereen and Castlehaven at that time, I mean seriously intense. That would be from not alone the players’ point of view but the people that had lived in the area for so long, going into Skibb for shopping, that’s where the Castlehaven people had to go and the thing would have built from there.