Hurling was the real star of the 2024 GAA season

It's January 2025 and it’s cold, wintry and dark. It reminds me of my school days. Even when I was a student in St Flannan’s College in Ennis, the only month I really disliked was January.

The Christmas lights were gone and Leaving Cert exams were getting closer - although we never worried about them until the grass was cut in April and May.

It was the hurling and football that kept us alive. With darkness descending early, it was difficult to train for the Harty Cup and senior football teams, despite the best efforts of who was later to become Bishop Willie Walsh, Fr Seamus Gardiner and Fr Ollie O’Doherty.

But on reflection, these were great days. Full of memories, full of characters. Some of us were lucky to be on the senior teams, few of us were fortunate to have Bishop Willie for our Leaving Cert physics class, the last class of the day on a Friday.

He was, with Fr Gardiner, the Harty Cup manager - the senior hurling managers. But the Friday after a Harty Cup or Munster Colleges game that we had won, the players in the class had to show initiative and ask the questions.

"Father…Father"… we would shout. "What did you think of Barry Smyth’s display on Wednesday against the North Mon?"

A great footballer like Mick Lillis, later to become a Clare and Laois footballer and Laois manager, would say: "Fair play Father, ye made great changes."

Under no circumstances could we allow him to start teaching and he was, by the way, a brilliant teacher.

Eventually he would relent and say in his Tipperary accent: "Right… we will talk about the game for five minutes."

"No problem Father - five minutes," in unison we would reply. But the truth is we knew we had him.

He smiled. We smiled. A double class of physics became a double class of hurling