Fr Pat Barry: The day Frank Murphy ordained I should play Munster final

As part of his preparation for religious life, Fr Pat Barry had to serve as a deacon in a parish: six months’ worth of pastoral experience ahead of his ordination, back in 1976. He was assigned to a parish on Canvey Island in Essex.

Barry already had a National Hurling League medal in his back pocket, won in the red and white of Cork, but for all intents and purposes inter-county hurling was in his past.

“I wasn’t even training with the Cork panel at that stage,” he recalls now. “Gone.” The parish priest he worked with in Essex was from Offaly and wanted to go back to Ireland on his holidays that July. Barry agreed to cover him - it was a one-man parish - so after he was ordained in June the Corkman returned to Essex to let the Offalyman home. Then the phone rang.