Foley

It takes a very special and unique type of person to be a true Munster rugby hero. In the coming week, as Munster comes out in its thousands to bury its dead heroAnthony Foley, the world will get some idea of the relationship between that community, its heroes and its abiding love of sport.

I remember during the 2006 Heineken Cup Final RTÉ had put a live camera in Limerick city centre beside a big screen. At one stage during an injury break in the game in the Millennium stadium in Cardiff, director Mick Fitzgerald cut to the live shot from Limerick. Thousands and thousands of people were watching. Astonishingly, the city centre had come to a halt to watch the game.

Afterwards the Munster team spoke of how that moment - it was flashed up on the big screen in the ground - was a welcome fillip. At the centre of all of that, of the extraordinary Munster odyssey to four Heineken cup finals and winning two, was Anthony Foley. An astute rugby brain operating out of the back-row at number 8 when the new rules had made the 10-9-8 axis the fulcrum of the modern game.

Foley was of Munster aristocratic rugby pedigree. His father Brendan had starred with Munster and Ireland and had been on the famous Munster 15 that had beaten the All Blacks. With a DNA like that very soon the young Anthony was starring with Limerick's famous Shannon club. Shannon was his birth, his rearing and I suspect at the end of this week, that he where he will finally end up.

The ferocity of the Shannon and Cork Constitution rivalry at the time was an important ingredient in the emergence of the great Munster team. Slowly but surely they began to grow in ambition and ability and a few wins against English and French opposition gradually built their fanbase. Critical too in this TV age where rugby is disappearing behind paywalls, RTE's free-to-air coverage was quintessential in building the huge Munster fanbase. In a very short time Munster's crowds had grown from hundreds to tens of thousands. Their progress became a national sporting pilgrimage.

Those Friday nights at Thomond, under the lights as the mist drifted in from the river, the swelling chorus of the crowd and Munster in ferocious mood were extraordinary. In the face of it, some of the best visiting players in Europe were simply overwhelmed. It was warfare with rules.

Foley was at the epicentre of it all, driving on the pack, making huge tackles and scoring an extraordinary number of tries for a back row. In attitude he was what Munster liked best of all, no quarter on the pitch and a warm and genial man off it. Munster had brought to rugby the intensity of the tribal relationship between fans and players that the GAA has always enjoyed. They were not only local heroes but they were our local heroes.

It hugely enriched Irish sport, it inspired a generation of young kids, boys and girls to play the game, and it succeeded in rescuing rugby football from the class margins of Irish society. In time too, the Munster epic with Anthony Foley at the wheel became the driving force that produced Irish international success.

There is no hero like a sporting hero, they get to places in the heart that few other things get to and they shake the mountains when they dance. Such was the one and only Anthony Foley of Shannon, Munster and Ireland.