Читать книгу The Boys of '93. Derry’s All-Ireland Kings онлайн

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One month later we’re back in Croke Park for the All-Ireland Final against Cork. This time it’s standing room only and I can see nothing through the heaving mass. On my tiptoes, I twist and stretch, smiling frantically at a harassed steward, ‘Are there free seats around the ground anywhere?’ Fifty All-Ireland Finals he’s marshalled and someone always needs a better seat. ‘See that dark-haired man down there?’ I plead, ‘That’s my uncle Eamonn.’

He finds me a seat – among the Cork fans – and laughs, ‘I hope you’re as happy when you come out.’

I am. For the first time in 106 years Derry are All-Ireland kings and my uncle, my godfather and friend is the man to have them crowned. What a feat, what glory, what pride, I babble when I see him after the game. ‘Bullshit this about managers’, he says, ‘the players is the men.’

The victors stay in Dublin for their gala celebration and we file off into the homeward-headed hordes. Out of the capital into Louth, we’re the heroes along the way; the hunters home from the Hill. Kids fly makeshift Derry flags; we honk and beep horns in reply. On the steps of the convent in Drogheda, nuns wave cushion covers of red and white; across the border into Down and an elderly man flies a Supervalu bag, no doubt trailed from a kitchen drawer – the first red and white banner he could find. We know now that thirty-one counties have been at our backs all the way and as first-time winners of the Sam Maguire, they are letting us have our day.