IT was the picture that sparked a thousand captions. The day after the night before, the Fulham Irish Twitter account posted a picture of its players out having the craic with men they had been supposed to have been going to war with, rather than going on the rip.
Galway champions Corofin had travelled over to London, only for their All-Ireland Club SFC quarter-final clash to be postponed, the pitch at Ruislip covered in a blanket of snow.
With the match likely to be rescheduled for well after Christmas, there would be nothing else for it.
“It was very unusual,” recalls Fulham Irish captain Michael Murphy.
“We agreed to go to the pub to have a pint and try to make a few plans for what the next number of weeks would hold… those plans were put on hold after the second pint.
“Then there was talk of the Corofin fellas being out and about. Twelve or 13 of them were staying over, so we met up in the city.”
A memorable session unfolded at the Porterhouse in Covent Garden, the players pictured happily enjoying the festivities, Fulham boss Gregory McCartan - like an extra from Peaky Blinders – in the middle of it all.
“Some people might look down their nose at that but I don’t see the harm,” continued Murphy.
“It was good craic and they were of the same mindset as us, only they’d made a bigger commitment coming across. They were letting their hair down.
“But we knew in the back of our heads, in six weeks’ time, we’ll be coming eye-to-eye with these boys again in different circumstances.”
That was December 10 and here we are, six weeks later, ready for battle again.
And Murphy, part of Tyrone’s All-Ireland winning panel in 2005, insists the Exiles are looking forward to finally getting out on the field against their vaunted opponents.
“Outside of our group, there’s not many people expecting us to do anything,” he added.
“We all have our clubs at home but there’s something special about coming together with a group of fellas who grew up in the countryside or towns and played Gaelic football all their life.
“You can only dream of being in games like this, playing against one of the best club teams in Ireland. It’s a great game to be involved in and we want to go out and do ourselves proud.”
