John Arnold: In Fatima - home of miracles - I pray Cork can pull one off!

I never met Raymond Smith, though I’ve read most of the 20 books he wrote. He was born in Killaloe in Clare in 1932, the year of the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin.

The family moved to Thurles when he was young and Raymond attended school in the ‘cradle of the GAA’. He loved sport but particularly hurling.

In December, 1968, he went to Tenerife in the Canary Islands to complete the writing of The Hurling Immortals, which was published the following year. It cost 8/6 (eight shillings and sixpence) and when I got it, I read it from cover to cover.

That was the summer of 1969, when my love affair with hurling was blossoming. I started secondary school in St Colman’s that September - Cork lost to Kilkenny in that year’s All-Ireland Hurling Final.

Smith was an inspiration to me, a 12-year-old, as I read about the hurlers and heroes of the past.

Here at parish level, Dave Ryan and David John Barry got me ‘immersed’ in the GAA and Raymond Smith, too, helped foster my love of Gaelic games.

Smith loved to take himself ‘away to a quiet place’ to think and to write - far from the madding crowd as it were. Hence his visit to Tenerife.

I had The Hurling Immortals with me this week. We travelled from Cork to Fatima last Thursday. I’d never been to the Marian Shrine in Portugal before and over four awe-filled days, I experienced the peace and calm and spirituality of the place. So different from the turmoil that engulfed the world at war in 1917, when three little children, Jacinta, Francesca and Lucia - all shepherds - repeatedly saw Our Lady on the 13th day of various months.

I have been many times to Lourdes, there’s no point in trying to ‘compare and contrast’ the two places. Both are unique, different yet similar in so many ways. As life and society and humanity in general seems to get faster and faster, and change is as normal as breathing, we need Lourdes and Knock and Fatima and Medjugorje and San Giovanni even more than ever.

Here in Cork, we say ‘hurling is like a religion’ - no doubt they say the same in Tipperary! In a week like this, we are consumed with hurling talk, and rightly so - though I still believe, like Raymond Smith, in “all the atmosphere that makes the first Sunday in September at Croke Park different from any other day in the GAA calendar” - that’s my view and I’m sticking to it.

Away, away from the roar of the crowd and the hustle and bustle of O’Connell Street and Jones’s Road, there we were last Saturday praying the Stations of the Cross on the winding way up the hillside to St Stephen’s Church.

We were following the actual path trod by the three children in 1917 and it was an emotional yet joyous journey. You know, I meet so many people who say they have no faith, no belief, no religion, but invariably they all experience something special in these remote places that were chosen for visits to bring heavenly messages to this troubled world of ours.

So here I am writing these words in the early morning sunshine - just after 7am last Tuesday.

We travelled down from Fatima to Vilamoura on Monday, a long bus journey, through arid fields growing olives and, with cultivation and irrigation, grapes. We saw many ‘cork’ trees too and, as we neared the beautiful Algarve, groves and groves of oranges and figs.

It was cool here at the weekend - as Ireland roasted - but down south here in Portugal, we experience heat as never before.

Still quiet in the early morning, I think back to 1969 and reading Raymond’s book for the first time – stunned and addicted I became about this great hurling game, and that infatuation has never faded!

Two years later, Mam took me to Lourdes for the first time – a freckly-faced teenager with a mop of curly red hair! Imagine, the next time I travelled there wasn’t until my half-century in 2007!

In 1972, I attended my first All-Ireland Final, and how lucky I’ve been to have got to see over 100 finals since in Croke Park, between hurling and football.

Looking out over the glistening sea in Vilamoura and expecting another glorious day, my thoughts went back to that non-summer of 1740.

Modern experts in such matters now claim 1740 was actually the end of a ‘mini Ice Age’. In Ireland, it rained and rained right into May and June and stayed as cold as winter. Crops weren’t planted and those that were failed. Hunger and famine stalked the land and tens of thousands of people died from starvation.

In 1741, things improved gradually and some crops were harvested. By the end of summer, the rain had stopped and the temperatures rose. There was a sense of relief and joy and carnival-like activities were held. This was nearly a century and a half before the GAA was founded but hurling was still being played.

Many local landlords were kind of ‘patrons’ for hurling teams. So it was that Colonel McAdam Barry, of Lisnagar, Rathcormac, issued a challenge and a hurling team from County Tipperary, captained by a Denis McGrath, came south.

In the autumn of 1741, in a field at Glenagoul, Kildinan the teams from Cork and Tipperary met. Who won? That’s the 100 guinea question!

The Tipp side claimed victory, and to consolidate their assertion one of their bards composed a fine Gaelic poem lauding the ‘visitors’.

‘Fake news’ was the answer from Cork, and Seán Ó Murchú wrote a counter-poem to set the record straight. He wrote: ‘twas improper of the Northern party/to boast its feats in lasting poetry/ whatever result they bandied about/ the Barrys won without a doubt’ - the poem had ten verses!

Luckily, both manuscripts survive - if they didn’t, all ‘memory’ of the game might have been lost.

Both poems were translated into English by the late Tom Barry of Rathcormac, a noted local historian.

In 1991, a game between Cork and Tipperary was organised by the Bride Rovers Club to mark the 250th anniversary of the event. In a throwback to 1740, torrential rain caused its cancellation - I still have the trophies!

This morning, early, I saw the glorious sunrise on the Portuguese coast. It reminded me of what happened in 1917 - that year two All-Ireland Senior Hurling Finals were played in Croke Park. The 1916 final -delayed for obvious historic reasons - was played in January with Boherlahan beating Tullaroan.

Ten months later, in October, 1917, Boherlahan lost out to Dublin’s Collegians in that years final.

In September, Our Lady told the three little shepherds she would ‘show a sign’ on October 13. More than 70,000 people gathered that day – one of torrential rain which turned the field into a sea of mud. Then the rain stopped and the sun ‘danced’, it moved and twirled across the sky, to the amazement of the throngs present.

On Monday last, before we left Fatima, we had Mass in a little Chapel behind the Capelhina. The entire back wall of the church is a magnificent multi-coloured stained-glass depiction of that Miracle of the Sun.

On Saturday evening, as we had dinner in our hotel, I was being updated by X (Twitter) at the table as Bride Rovers were playing a League Final at home. After the soup, the teams were level, after the main course still level - extra time, and still level after the dessert.

Four points down with nine minutes to go, but then it happened, a scoring burst and we won by seven points!

Next Sunday, one point would do!

Raymond Smith quoted Waterford great John Keane: “When Cork are on the march, they get the finest support that any county could hope for -it’s hard to stop them with a following like that.”

Hopefully, the hurling famine will end. I don’t know if we need a miracle but here’s hoping, c’mon the Rebels.