I was driving back from Thurles the other night and I was thinking to myself when was the last time I got the train back from Thurles and the answer was the night of the Munster final replay in 1998. And the reason I never get the train to and from matches anymore was that myself and my companion for the day were stalked the whole way back by 1990s Dublin Hurling Man (Dhm). Dhm started out to be reasonably pleasant although I didn’t care for the intrusion. It had been a long and emotional day and neither my companion nor I were in the mood for much in the way of chat
Nothing would do your man though but to keep blathering on about how much he loved the hurling and how many games he went to every year and how he went to every Dublin hurling game at every level, but not the football. He hated the football. It was a dark joyless world this obsessive inhabited. He was kitted out in grey and black as one would imagine.
Anyway at some point things turned from the merely tiresome to the dark and threatening. Perhaps we had not paid him enough homage, maybe we had uttered a disrespectful remark about Dublin hurling, but next minute your man was haranguing us about what a shower of cunts Waterford were and how great Clare were. As the train pulled into Kingsbridge we tried to give him the slip, but to no avail. When we got to Ned Reas on Parkgate St there he was still following us abusing us under his breath. We supped a pint and left for Ryan’s in Parkgate St, only for your man to follow us in there as well. I can still see the baldy cunt in my minds eye.
We gave up and left having to get a taxi because your man would have followed us if we’d taken the bus.
I’ve never taken public transport to a match since.