LIKE TWO OF my school friends who experienced that week alongside me, I live in England now. Plenty of others have also left home.
In October 2016, however, we were all living and breathing Limerick city life, and that meant sport was entrenched in our routines.
. . . Routines that came to an abrupt halt when one of Irish rugby’s favourite sons, Anthony ‘Axel’ Foley, died unexpectedly at the Novotel hotel in Suresnes, a suburb to the west of Paris.
The Munster coach failed to turn up for a team run-through on the morning of their 16 October Champions Cup clash with Racing 92, prompting concern from director of rugby Rassie Erasmus, assistant coach Jerry Flannery and the wider Munster set-up.
Initial attempts to contact Foley were unsuccessful. Then, a check on the 42-year-old from a member of the hotel staff and a Munster player at 12.40 discovered he had passed away in his sleep.
The news sent shockwaves through Irish sport and beyond. In Limerick and Clare, where Foley grew up, played and became a sporting hero, the loss was felt especially deeply.
I was a student at St Munchin’s College at the time, a school with one foot in either county, and a school where former pupil Foley embodied so much of what we were taught about life and rugby.
***
Rugby was everything to us, with every week built around clattering our boots through the halls for training and getting pumped for our matches against rival Limerick schools each Wednesday.
The underdog mentality worn in the glory days of St Munchin’s College rugby was fed down to us early on, most memorably by legendary schools coach John Broderick in 2013/2014, our first academic year in the school and his last.
Against the world, a togetherness that would otherwise have taken a couple of years to forge with new classmates was cemented in our very first few weeks.
A togetherness, more of strength and brotherhood than contemporary wellness and vulnerability, mind you, but a togetherness nonetheless.
And whatever happened in our own matches or at all-important Senior Cup clashes during the week, we carried that spirit into our weekends at Thomond Park.
Supporting Munster, a team filled with Munchin’s alumni in the 2010s, felt exciting, especially against the superpowers of Europe. Through Broderick’s disciples Damien Varley, Donnacha Ryan, Conor Murray, Keith Earls, Denis Hurley – and their beloved coach Axel – we were proudly represented. Those were the days. Those were the weeks.
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But no week is etched into my heart and mind quite like this very one ten years ago.
***
Wearing the Shannon No 8 shirt on Sunday morning, I tried to ball-carry above my weight and came up embarrassingly short against a typically physical Ennis team.
I grew up playing for UL Bohs, but for a brief few weeks in Transition Year I found myself behind enemy lines. I can explain why: Bohs had failed to rally enough numbers that year, and Shannon amalgamated with my local club, St Mary’s – the former club of Anthony’s father, Brendan.
What I can’t explain is why is I, the slightest young fella in the team, was playing at the base of the scrum. The coaches had a hard time explaining it too, so it ended up being my one and only start. The jersey had seen better days.
I thought it all felt weird as I went about my business on the pitch that morning, but by the afternoon, weirdness took on a whole new meaning.
My cousin and I walked up the hill from the rugby club to shower and change at mine. I washed first and, bumped and bruised, settled down on the couch for the big day of European rugby ahead. Racing 92 vs Munster the main event.
But by the time my cousin came back downstairs, tweets began to drip onto my feed that stopped Munster and the wider rugby world in their tracks.
***
‘Anthony was my true soulmate. We were perfect together.’
The eulogy delivered by Anthony’s wife, Olive, in Killaloe was one that stays with you forever.
It takes a lot for a Munchin’s bus to be quiet, but when dozens of us made our way to his funeral that next Friday, the weight of his loss wasn’t lost on anybody.
Munster fans gather to play to tribute to Anthony Foley following news of his death. Billy Stickland / INPHO
Billy Stickland / INPHO / INPHO
We all knew it was a privilege to represent our school. What we didn’t quite anticipate was how much we would see and learn about ourselves once outside St Flannan’s Church.
Lined along the streets where he grew up, witnessing the outpouring of love, did we suddenly open up about our own families, losses and battles? No.
Limerick schoolboys, it turns out, aren’t so talkative when emotions are the subject.
But that day, the empathy in our silences said everything. Maybe it was because Axel was known to speak our same selectively quiet language.
On the outside, he was tough, tight-lipped, even gruff, but he needn’t perform anything to the contrary, as everyone who knew him seemed to cherish his goodness.
That’s when I understood the quiet love that bound my friends together.
***
Just over 24 hours later, we joined a rocking Thomond Park in roaring a grieving Munster team towards an epic 38-17 Champions Cup victory over Glasgow Warriors.
It was beyond comprehension that they had buried their head coach the previous day, and it remains the most emotional sporting occasion I have attended.
We stood in the Ballynanty end, the same side where a young Keith Earls grew up hopping stadium walls to watch training sessions and fetch balls for the Munster sides of Axel’s era.
When Earls was sent off in the 19th minute for a tackle on Fraser Brown, it was, therefore, devastating. Yet, rather than deflate the crowd, it only took an extraordinary atmosphere to another stratosphere – each fan, including me, would have togged out before they’d have seen Munster lose that game in Earls’ name.
Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
The magical team showing, which yielded tries from Tyler Bleyendaal, Jaco Taute, Simon Zebo and Rory Scannell, meant 14 men would be enough, regardless. On the evidence of their performance levels, 13 might have done the trick too.
But while the match was extraordinary, it was singing post-match rendition of ‘Stand Up And Fight’, led by the Munster squad and Axel’s sons, that truly brought the week’s emotions to a climax.
Through the song’s duration, the events of the week flashed by my eyes while my friend group’s newfound bond crystallised in Thomond’s autumn air.
Sometimes that bond gets dusty, sometimes it gets distant.
But in the ten years that have since passed, nothing has been able to break it.
This weekend we’ll meet to watch the anniversary game in Jerry Flannery’s Bar on Catherine Street. There, the bond will be renewed.
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Anthony Foley was an inspiration to pupils at his old school - his death affected us deeply
LIKE TWO OF my school friends who experienced that week alongside me, I live in England now. Plenty of others have also left home.
In October 2016, however, we were all living and breathing Limerick city life, and that meant sport was entrenched in our routines.
. . . Routines that came to an abrupt halt when one of Irish rugby’s favourite sons, Anthony ‘Axel’ Foley, died unexpectedly at the Novotel hotel in Suresnes, a suburb to the west of Paris.
The Munster coach failed to turn up for a team run-through on the morning of their 16 October Champions Cup clash with Racing 92, prompting concern from director of rugby Rassie Erasmus, assistant coach Jerry Flannery and the wider Munster set-up.
Initial attempts to contact Foley were unsuccessful. Then, a check on the 42-year-old from a member of the hotel staff and a Munster player at 12.40 discovered he had passed away in his sleep.
The news sent shockwaves through Irish sport and beyond. In Limerick and Clare, where Foley grew up, played and became a sporting hero, the loss was felt especially deeply.
I was a student at St Munchin’s College at the time, a school with one foot in either county, and a school where former pupil Foley embodied so much of what we were taught about life and rugby.
***
Rugby was everything to us, with every week built around clattering our boots through the halls for training and getting pumped for our matches against rival Limerick schools each Wednesday.
The underdog mentality worn in the glory days of St Munchin’s College rugby was fed down to us early on, most memorably by legendary schools coach John Broderick in 2013/2014, our first academic year in the school and his last.
Against the world, a togetherness that would otherwise have taken a couple of years to forge with new classmates was cemented in our very first few weeks.
A togetherness, more of strength and brotherhood than contemporary wellness and vulnerability, mind you, but a togetherness nonetheless.
And whatever happened in our own matches or at all-important Senior Cup clashes during the week, we carried that spirit into our weekends at Thomond Park.
Supporting Munster, a team filled with Munchin’s alumni in the 2010s, felt exciting, especially against the superpowers of Europe. Through Broderick’s disciples Damien Varley, Donnacha Ryan, Conor Murray, Keith Earls, Denis Hurley – and their beloved coach Axel – we were proudly represented. Those were the days. Those were the weeks.
But no week is etched into my heart and mind quite like this very one ten years ago.
***
Wearing the Shannon No 8 shirt on Sunday morning, I tried to ball-carry above my weight and came up embarrassingly short against a typically physical Ennis team.
I grew up playing for UL Bohs, but for a brief few weeks in Transition Year I found myself behind enemy lines. I can explain why: Bohs had failed to rally enough numbers that year, and Shannon amalgamated with my local club, St Mary’s – the former club of Anthony’s father, Brendan.
What I can’t explain is why is I, the slightest young fella in the team, was playing at the base of the scrum. The coaches had a hard time explaining it too, so it ended up being my one and only start. The jersey had seen better days.
I thought it all felt weird as I went about my business on the pitch that morning, but by the afternoon, weirdness took on a whole new meaning.
My cousin and I walked up the hill from the rugby club to shower and change at mine. I washed first and, bumped and bruised, settled down on the couch for the big day of European rugby ahead. Racing 92 vs Munster the main event.
But by the time my cousin came back downstairs, tweets began to drip onto my feed that stopped Munster and the wider rugby world in their tracks.
***
‘Anthony was my true soulmate. We were perfect together.’
The eulogy delivered by Anthony’s wife, Olive, in Killaloe was one that stays with you forever.
It takes a lot for a Munchin’s bus to be quiet, but when dozens of us made our way to his funeral that next Friday, the weight of his loss wasn’t lost on anybody.
We all knew it was a privilege to represent our school. What we didn’t quite anticipate was how much we would see and learn about ourselves once outside St Flannan’s Church.
Lined along the streets where he grew up, witnessing the outpouring of love, did we suddenly open up about our own families, losses and battles? No.
Limerick schoolboys, it turns out, aren’t so talkative when emotions are the subject.
But that day, the empathy in our silences said everything. Maybe it was because Axel was known to speak our same selectively quiet language.
On the outside, he was tough, tight-lipped, even gruff, but he needn’t perform anything to the contrary, as everyone who knew him seemed to cherish his goodness.
That’s when I understood the quiet love that bound my friends together.
***
Just over 24 hours later, we joined a rocking Thomond Park in roaring a grieving Munster team towards an epic 38-17 Champions Cup victory over Glasgow Warriors.
It was beyond comprehension that they had buried their head coach the previous day, and it remains the most emotional sporting occasion I have attended.
We stood in the Ballynanty end, the same side where a young Keith Earls grew up hopping stadium walls to watch training sessions and fetch balls for the Munster sides of Axel’s era.
When Earls was sent off in the 19th minute for a tackle on Fraser Brown, it was, therefore, devastating. Yet, rather than deflate the crowd, it only took an extraordinary atmosphere to another stratosphere – each fan, including me, would have togged out before they’d have seen Munster lose that game in Earls’ name.
The magical team showing, which yielded tries from Tyler Bleyendaal, Jaco Taute, Simon Zebo and Rory Scannell, meant 14 men would be enough, regardless. On the evidence of their performance levels, 13 might have done the trick too.
But while the match was extraordinary, it was singing post-match rendition of ‘Stand Up And Fight’, led by the Munster squad and Axel’s sons, that truly brought the week’s emotions to a climax.
Through the song’s duration, the events of the week flashed by my eyes while my friend group’s newfound bond crystallised in Thomond’s autumn air.
Sometimes that bond gets dusty, sometimes it gets distant.
But in the ten years that have since passed, nothing has been able to break it.
This weekend we’ll meet to watch the anniversary game in Jerry Flannery’s Bar on Catherine Street. There, the bond will be renewed.
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