Anthony Foley: Munster flags bled from every windowsill
There is an aisle. It runs down the centre of Saint Flannan’s church in the heart of the hilltop town of Killaloe, capital of Kincora of the ancient Irish kings even before Brian Boru. That aisle yesterday was the pitch for the first phase of the last play involving local sporting king Axel Foley as the plain people he grew up amongst to become a legend across the rugby world came out by the thousand to pay their respects.
No ancient King of Kincora was ever more poignantly or powerfully mourned.
His flag-draped casket was at the altar end of the aisle in front of a thousand roses of exactly the hue of the Munster jersey. Members of his grieving family were in the front row of the benches of grief and respect. Even the sanctuary lamp high above was Munster red on the day. Outside the church, the huge queues along the pavements where he grew up resembled an orderly scrum against the barriers which controlled entry to the church. The whole town’s atmosphere, numbed and shocked by the sudden death of a legend still only 42 years old, was akin to the concussed impact on opponents of the forays and surges for Munster and Ireland of the Number 8 who was always Number One in Killaloe.
Scores of Gardai and stewards were needed to maintain a one-way traffic system to cope with the events of the day. Folk said that even the hills over and around Killaloe were garbed in the Munster red at dawn of an October day so warm and gentle that it felt like midsummer. Kincora put on a show for one of its own. In keeping with the mood of grief and loss the Munster flags which bled from every windowsill and vantage point in the town were hanging limply rather than tautly and ferociously flapping as at the big games in Thomond Park just down the road.
Here and there amongst the former friends and neighbours and supporters paying their respects were the burly blocks of teams from the other provinces and many legends from the past such as Tom Kiernan.
Leo Cullen, for example, was at the head of the Leinster team who paid their respects early in the day, the incredibly tall Devin Toner head and shoulders above the masses.
Just a small sparkle of levity from a local at the sight of the Leinster team ahead of him with a reference to the triumph of Leinster over Munster a fortnight ago. “Axel might still be with us, God knows, if we hadn’t lost the second Battle of Clontarf.”
His family have long been deeply enmeshed in the life of Killaloe, where they live.
His widow Olive is a member of the local choir which will provide the hymns during the final phase of the funeral ceremonies today. A sister teaches in the Community College to which his father Brendan once drove one of the school buses. The family once owned a public house at the bottom of the town, a few hundred yards away from Saint Flannan’s. Anthony Foley never behaved like the sporting legend he was in his own family life in the town. They were talking much about that yesterday as the queue shuffled towards the chapel.
He was usually seen with his young sons Tony and Dan at their hurling practice sessions on the edge of town. Another code but a sport he also loved.
They said that if he spotted a young lad who had the makings of a good hurler, even a very young lad, he would make sure to pass that information on to the parents. Small things like that matter big time in Kincora country.
The second phase of his last play takes place today when the grieving family will be joined in St Flannan’s by the high and mighty of the sporting and other Irish worlds.
Then he will be borne down that long aisle to the local graveyard named Relig Lua to rest in peace, but clearly never forgotten by his own.
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