Tadhg Coakley: The twin miracles of sport: Faith and love

If Cork win tonight, we will be insufferable again, but that’s not the point. The point is the eternal hope.

Cork supporter Paudie McSweeney, from Inniskeen, Cork, with his son Ché, aged 2, from Croom, Limerick, ahead of the 2023 Munster SHC meeting of Limerick and Cork at TUS Gaelic Grounds. Picture: Daire Brennan/Sportsfile

In 2017 I met a Galway couple on the Luas in Dublin. It was the day of the All-Ireland hurling final between Galway and Waterford. They were in their mid-sixties or so. They were well dressed, the way some people put on good clothes to go to matches.

They looked comfortable as the saying goes – economically, anyway. But the man seemed ill. His skin was the colour of wet ash, a pasty, darkish pallor. His face was dull, his suit was dull, his body was bent in on itself and his eyes were withdrawn as the tram trundled its way into the city centre. He was gazing inward, not out. Poor fella, I thought, maybe it’s his last All-Ireland and he knows it.