Tadhg Coakley's Páirc Uí Chaoimh pilgrimage: I sit by the Atlantic Pond, my back to the gale. Hurling is back

The final scoreboard at an empty Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

I’m not sure why I went down to Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday and listened to the Cork-Waterford Allianz Hurling League match on a radio outside the stadium instead of watching it at home or looking for a press pass to see it in the flesh.

I wanted to celebrate the return of hurling but behind a sense of juxtaposition. The one Martin Scorsese created when he overlaid the sublime music of the ‘Intermezzo’ from Cavalleria Rusticana on Jake LaMotta’s brutality and violence in Raging Bull. Or if you ever played sport in snow, where both the game and the snow are amplified and made more vivid because of each other.