...... well except for a few who hadn’t the money or just did not fancy travelling to that far-off city of Dublin.  One such person was Pat Donaghue who lived in Mill Street.

Pat was a regular in Madden’s Bar and it did not matter that all his drinking buddies were going to the match - Pat refused to budge.

‘ I will be sitting in the comfort of my own home, having my couple of bottles of stout and listening to the match on the radio while you lot will be standing with thousands of people, probably getting soaked!’

was his answer to the many requests to go to the match.

Match day came and Pat settled down with his drink and his radio. Everything was going well, Pat had just poured a bottle of stout and Micheál O’Heir was commentating, in that very distinctive high-pitched heavily-accented voice:

‘…and moving down the right wing and heading for the Galway goal is Sean O’Neill.  He beats one man and then another.  If he gets this score it could make all the difference to the game.’

At that precise moment the commentary stopped.  Pat jumped up, grabbed and shook the radio but to no avail, the battery was dead.  He had forgotten to have it charged in JJ Magowan’s on the Saturday.

He drank the rest of the stout and the half bottle of Paddy whiskey he kept for such occasions.  After a while he fell asleep on the sofa, woke at about 10 o’clock and as, in those days, there were no pubs open he went straight to bed.

He woke late on Monday with an almighty sore head and headed straight to Madden’s for a cure.  Sitting at the bar were his drinking buddies Jim McMillan and Tom Hayes, both of whom had been at the game.

‘How’s about you,  Pat? You don’t look well. What are you having?’ asked Jim.

‘I’ll have a small Paddy and a bottle of stout if it’s all the same to you,’ Pat replied.  ‘And who won the match?’ he asked.

Tom answered him, ‘Down were beat by one eleven to one four.  Sure, I thought you were listening to the game on the radio.   What happened?’

Pat explained about the battery letting him down and that it happened just as Sean O’Neill was going for goal.

Tom looked at Jim and winked:

‘So you didn’t hear what happened then?’

‘How bl**dy well could I have, with no radio?  So what did happen?’

‘Well,’

says Tom, slowly,

‘Sean was going for a certain goal.  Just at that moment Micheál O’Heir jumped from the commentary box, ran on to the pitch and tripped O’Neill up.  

Otherwise Down might have won the game.’

Pat looked at them in amazement.

‘The rotten b****rd.

I knew he hated Down but I never thought he would go that far!’

And with that he stormed out of the pub.

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

P.S. Pat Donaghue and Tom Hayes are, sadly, now both dead.  Jim McMillan is still alive.