Limerick hurler Richie English and his dad share special moment with Liam in hospital

ON THE EVE of the All-Ireland hurling final, Richie English sat with his father, Paddy, in hospital and pictured what it would be like to bring the Liam MacCarthy Cup to his bedside.

“I said to him on the way out, ‘Hopefully, I’ll have it here sitting down beside you some day next week’. He said, ‘No bother at all,” recalled Richie, Limerick’s ever present corner back.

Richie got to realise that dream on the Tuesday after the game. The young man from Doon, and County Board secretary, Mike O’Riordan, went in to St John’s Hospital with the cup discreetly hidden in a bag. Little did staff and other patients know the treasure they were carrying. A private moment was shared between father and son. A  photograph was taken to capture the special occasion. Richie later posted it on his Instagram account.

“I was going to put up a few more pictures during the week but I just left it at that one. I can’t really top that one. He has MS and he had a long -term illness there for a while but he is recovering well. He’s in a wheelchair full-time for the past year. He used go to all the matches – Doon, Fitzgibbon Cup, Limerick. 

“It made it special (to get the cup in) the fact that he couldn’t go to any matches this year but that’s the way life goes,” said Richie, who thanked the staff in St John’s and especially Mike O’Riordan for allowing him bring the Liam MacCarthy to his father when it had to be in “40 different places”.

Looking at it from Paddy’s point of view, imagine what it must be like to see your son walking in with the Liam MacCarthy Cup.

“It gave me a great lift. It gave us all in the ward a lift,” said Paddy, aged 60, who is married to Marian and they have a daughter Lisa. It certainly did give Paddy a lift as he was discharged the next day after five months in St John’s.

“I was lying in my bed and in comes Mike O’Riordan, Richie and they’d the cup with them. Ah sure I was delighted, absolutely thrilled. I got wind that the cup might be coming in so the nurses said they’d ring the bell as soon as Richie came in. They rang the bell between 1.25pm and 1.35pm and they were all going for their lunch. Afterwards there was a lovely little girl from the Philippines, she said ‘Oh, I missed it, bring it back!’” smiled Paddy.

The father-of-two even made it to Monday’s homecoming in Doon for the club’s four players – Richie, Darragh O’Donovan, Pat Ryan “Simon” and Barry Murphy.

“You take all of the lads that were up on that podium, they’re all grand lads. They’re a credit to their parents,” said Paddy, who watched the game in the hospital. Like the rest of us it didn’t do him any good.

“The heart was stopping. The last ball that Joe Canning lobbed into the square could have gone anywhere,” said Paddy, who started the interview by saying Richie gets his talent from his mum’s  side of the family.

“Let me say from the outset, Richie gets all his hurling from his mother’s side, the Fitzgibbons in County Cork.”

Maybe so but Richie got plenty of heart and determination from his dad. At the end of the homecoming, Richie jumped down from the stage and waded through the crowd to get to Paddy.

And just as he reached him the opening bars to the Cranberries’ Dreams started up.