THE HURLING rivalry between Tipp and Limerick may run deep but it didn’t stop a Good Samaritan from the Premier County from helping out a Shannonsider in a spot of bother.
When Colm Casey returned to find his car was the only one left in the Thurles Sarsfields GAA grounds after watching the Limerick hurling game and then the World Cup final, he thought the car park attendant would see red.
The discovery that his car battery was dead, he worried, would drive him over the edge altogether.
How wrong he was.
Colm takes up the story: “It was overcast and the lights were on when I was driving to Thurles for the hurling game on Sunday and I got out of the car in a hurry. I went to the game, watched the World Cup final in Hayes Hotel afterwards and then I came back and mine was the last car in the field and the man was waiting, very patiently to chain it up and whatever.”
There wasn’t a sign of anything working off the remote control for the car. Colm realised very quickly that he wasn’t going to be able to get into the car so he decided to get a train back to Limerick and return to Thurles in the morning.
“The man says, ‘Not a bother, I’ll drop you into the station’. So instead of being annoyed, he dropped me into the station, gave me his name and number and said, ‘Let me know when you are coming back out in the morning’. I was wondering why but said nothing.”
When Colm was changing trains at Limerick Junction on Monday morning, he sent the Tipp man a text to say he was leaving the junction and would be in Thurles shortly.
“Low and behold, as I’m walking out to Thurles Sarsfields ground to collect the car, he’s there, at the crossroads, and he picks me up with his pal and he drives me to the ground”.
Colm opened the car, to find, as predicted, that the battery was dead.
“So he said, ‘Not a bother’. He goes away with his pal, comes back with a third man and a starter pack and they started the car.”
Unwittingly, Colm turned off the engine and the car refused to start as it wasn’t charged enough.
“So he started it again, a second time,” Colm emphasised.
And the name of the Good Samaritan?
“Jimmy Purcell of Thurles Sarsfields. He had been looking after the car park all day. It was around 6.30pm when I came back to find my car was the last one. He went above and beyond.”
Article from Limerick Leader 20/7/18
