The Right Sort Of Homecoming

If Galanta wins this race, then Offaly will beat Cork on Sunday, announced one of the lads confidently from his perch in the Ballybrit grandstand on the Friday of Galway race week. The rest of us looked at him doubtfully before peering into the distance at the sleek two-year-old that was plodding down to the start of its very first race and decided it was probably as good a way as any of determining the outcome of the Sunday game.

The poor beast was already carrying eight stone of jockey and a not inconsiderable sum of our money on its back, so adding the hopes and dreams of an entire county to its burden was hardly going to make much difference to its performance.
Truth be told, our native county needed all the help it could get. The annual mauling at the hands of Kilkenny in the Leinster final had preceded a thoroughly humiliating performance against Derry (feckin Derry!) in an All Ireland quarter final which Offaly had only a dubious right to be in and came perilously close to losing.
For a team such as ours to have been eliminated from the Senior Hurling Championship by the fumbling dilettantes of Ulster would be nothing short of catastrophic (memories of the 1989 humiliation at the hands of Antrim still send a chill down the spine of every self-respecting Offaly citizen), so it was generally hoped that by merely embarrassing themselves in victory, the team would subsequently get their shit together for the semi-final against Cork and lose with their dignity intact. For a county nicknamed The Faithful, we re a notoriously fickle bunch.
Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, I believe this column named London Calling because it s all about London was in the grandstand at the Galway races, planking himself because most of his available liquid assets were tied up in a horse that he had never seen run before.
Indeed, for all he knew, nobody else had ever seen it run before either. What if it couldn t run? What if Jim Bolger, the trainer, had got cocky and just assumed it could run? What if he d decided that training and fitness and stamina was for eejits and sure, if the horse just turned up on the day it s natural talent would shine through? After all, isn t that what everyone in the country thinks the hurlers of Offaly do?
Thankfully, Mr Bolger had seen to it that the horse could run like the wind, and seven furlongs and one nerve-jangling photo-finish later, it was announced that plucky Galanta had got the head in front at the first attempt.
We cheered raucously and made for the betting ring to collect our free money, before piling into Eyre Square to celebrate our new found wealth by spending it all on drink. It wasn t until the journey home to Birr the following day that somebody remembered that Galanta s success was destined to be mirrored by Offaly on Sunday. In the stone cold sober light of day, several of our number seemed less than confident.
While we were still on the road, however, the mood swung violently. Somebody rang us to enquire if we d passed through picturesque Portumna yet. We hadn t, no. Delighted, our informant let us know that if we fancied another wager, a bookie in the locale was offering odds of 10/1 on Offaly beating Cork on Sunday.
That s 10/1 in a two horse race against Cork. Not even a horse, mind, but a county. A county that had been lucky to beat us at the same stage last year by two measly points; a county renowned for being home to a population that sings instead of talks; a county that cursed us with that clown Aidan, who has the temerity to spend his every wanking hour inundating the hotpress letters page with with letters! Shurely shome mishtake?
There was no mishtake. We stopped off at the bookies in question to find a large sign on the wall advertising 10/1 against Offaly in Sunday s game. Fuck it, we decided. We d been travelling to see these hoors long enough to know they were too talented to capitulate in such an important fixture without a scrap. Anyway, didn t we all know Brian Whelahan in school, and now he was a hurler of the millennium, featured on a stamp, no less! He d pull it out of the fire for us on Sunday and we d all be available to lick his arse at home in private instead of dropping down to the pub to do it.
Suitably insulted by the bookie s cheek, we vented our spleen in a flurry of betting slips and #20 notes.
And so to Croke Park, where Offaly defied every single learned GAA correspondent in the country (not to mention Babs Keating) by getting their heads in front like Galanta. We restored our pride, we won a few hundred quid and we all cried with relief at the final whistle. But it wasn t about the cash we d have cried anyway.
I ll bet you any money we would . . .
So why am I telling you this? Because I have to tell someone, and now that I m back in Blighty, nobody has the foggiest idea what I m on about. If I ve learnt one thing in the year or so since I ve emigrated, it s that the citizens of London care little for talk of timber.
The fools.