Axel, did you notice the depth of mourning, the sense of loss?

So, Axel Foley, how was it for you yesterday during the ritual hush for that final conversion in Killaloe?

We are a spiritual race, but anyway, psychic studies from No Man’s Land a century ago prove that the spirits of young warriors violently snatched away before their natural time do not speed away to the other dimension at once but stay at the scene for days and even weeks.

So you were invisibly present yesterday around the Saint Flannan’s Church where you were baptised as your townsfolk and the high and mighty of your rugby world gathered for the closing ritual of a short life. Did you ever before observe so many male tears on a big occasion? Surely not ever. Did you notice, as the bells tolled over Kincora, the palpable width and depth of the mourning and sense of loss?

When the lonesome violin on the broadcast system at the church played the sporting warrior tune “The Toreador” over the hundreds gathered outside the church as your mortal remains were carried within by your family members and colleagues, even the babies in the buggies were hushed. As the Requiem Mass sounded out over the town centre and your neighbour’s and friends crossed themselves and responded quietly, was it by accident or design that the flocks of black rooks in the airy spaces above were replaced on a gentle afternoon by skeins of white gulls?

We would not know anything about the workings of that other dimension.

Your friend and chief celebrant, Fr Pat Malone, had more emotion in his voice than is normal for professionals in his trade as he spoke about you, primarily, as a family man of Killaloe rather than a sporting legend. Did you pick up on that too? And the local choir of which your Olive is a member sounded proud rather than sad over the speakers beneath the circling gulls. And the legions of Munster flags seemed to flutter in time rather than just hang there limply, as they have for the past week since your passing.

The gardaí on duty keeping the traffic in order, along with the civil defence personnel and the army of volunteer stewards, kept your town functioning during the conversion time in the afternoon. On the road from the chapel down to your final resting place in Reilig Lua graveyard, the boys from the national school were lined up for a fresh-faced guard of honour in their blue uniforms, muted by the solemnity of the occasion. Will any of them, in the future years, ever play for Munster and Ireland, maybe even the Lions, as you did? You, in your new sphere, could answer that question already.

It was touchingly apt that your grave in Reilig Lua was lined with a layer of moss the colour of the Irish jersey and surrounded by the Munster flags. Right and fitting too that the cherry trees either side of the entrance were scarlet with the last berries of the year.

You will be resting next to the Carews and Mollaghans, families you have known since boyhood and sure maybe the open green sward around your grave kinda represents the space where you made so many hard yards during your career.

Finally you will be forever only the width of Peter Egan’s field away from your home on the Hill Road, forever close in every dimension to Olive and sons Tony and Dan and the rest of the family. And only the length of three playing fields from the heart of the historic old town that loved you so well. I’m certain you are relishing that.