Deise desire to see Liam MacCarthy return to Waterford once again was clearly evident at the weekend. The All-Ireland final had a palpable sense of importance as both Galway and Waterford attempted to end their respective title famines.
Galway's 29-year wait for another All-Ireland is over. Waterford's will now extend to its 59th year.
Writing in his Irish Times column on Friday, Jackie Tyrrell told of how one Waterford woman's desire to get her hands on the cup caused some serious panic two years ago.
In 2015, Tyrrell took a trip to San Francisco, the Liam MacCarthy Cup in his possession. Kerry's Aidan O'Mahony was also along for the trip, Sam Maguire in tow.
After a few pints in the presence of the cup, the Kilkenny man suddenly realised that it was missing.
We were having a right good night until suddenly at about one o’clock in the morning, we couldn’t find the cup.
That would sober anybody up. For a half an hour, there were phonecalls going here, there and everywhere. I was panicking, big time. I was imagining the conversations when I got back to Kilkenny. You had one job, Tyrrell. One job. Don’t lose the cup.
In the end, it turned out that a Waterford woman had decided it would be a great idea to bring it to an Irish bar around the corner from where the function was. We found it but I nearly had a heart attack.
Tyrrell suggested that the cup should have a GPS tracker attached to it just to see how much mileage it clocks up over the next 12 months, a device he surely would have been appreciative of in that bar.
Picture credit: Stephen McCarthy / SPORTSFILE
