'Best money ever spent' for Munster fans who made trip to Cape Town
They came from all four corners of the globe at short notice to see Munster in the BKT URC Grand Final and there will not be many among the travelling Red Army of around 2,000 supporters who will consider it to have been a bad idea.
Certainly not Oonagh O'Mahoney, a Corkwoman living in Surrey, England, who had the added bonus of seeing the Munster-supporting baton pass to a new generation in the form of her teenage son James Collins as their team defied the odds to land a first trophy in 12 years on a giddy night in Cape Town last Saturday.
Oonagh, originally from Bishopstown in Cork City, was among the thousands who went through heartaches and pitfalls of Munster’s near misses in the Heineken Cup two decades ago and then got their rewards with two European titles in 2006 and 2008.
Yet a dozen years on from that Magners League final win over Leinster at Thomond Park, it was a first piece of silverware experienced at first hand for a whole cohort of the province’s followers.
"To watch James experience what I'd experienced... in 2006 when we first got over the line, we'd been pipped at the post so many times, we felt so hard done by,” Oonagh told the Irish Examiner.
"In 2006, when we won there was such an outpouring of emotion, my brother was behind me in tears, fellas I'd known were sobbing and my mum and dad were seven rows behind and in tears, I'd never seen my dad in tears, it was amazing.
"Now to watch James experience those same feelings, I feel the baton has now passed. He's been a Munster fan since he was born, that was a non-negotiable.”
The teenager also grabbed a little of the spotlight on Saturday night, television cameras honing in on his red-eyed face at full-time. The assumption that his tears were of emotion but he had accidentally thumped himself in the eye while celebrating John Hodnett's match-winning try.
"I saw it on the big screen and then it was on Twitter because it had been shown on television as well,” James said, “just after I'd punched myself in the eye.”
Oonagh will be renewing her season ticket alongside her 83-year-old parents for 2023-24 and embarking once more on the commute from Cobham to Thomond Park as Graham Rowntree’s team defends its hard-earned URC title. It will not be as arduous a journey as the one taken to get to the DHL Stadium but she added: "Best money I've ever spent. I would have been gutted to have been at home and missed this.
"It was different from 2006 and 2008. All the Munster fans were in the Ferryman Tavern and they all had their flags and we walked en masse to the stadium. I've never seen that happen before.
"We all went to greet the team bus as it arrived and the Stormers bus came first so we used that as a practice run! The policemen in the cars (escorting the team bus) grabbed Munster flags and we're waving them and when the bus came you could see Graham Rowntree in the front and he was grinning from ear to ear.
"There's such a real connection between the fans and the team."
That is perhaps what keeps the supporters coming back, even when a trophy seemed a very long way off, as Oonagh explained.
"It's weird. I liken going to matches that aren't Munster like going on a date with someone and there's no chemistry.
"I can go to a Leinster match and appreciate the rugby but I'm not invested in it.
"So I don't know. There was times when I would think, 'oh, hang it, it's gone, it'll never come back'.
"But there was something about the way Axel died, all of us came together and we got back to a shared experience again.
"And it's the old thing, like beating Leinster the other week, nobody gave us a chance and I think that's where we do better as Munster, if you write us off."
