Earlier today in the TRK Secret Club on Discord, someone pointed out to me that eight years ago today, Ian Keatley kicked a drop goal in red time against Sale Sharks in the European Cup to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

You can watch the clip here – it features an all-timer of a call by Mark Robson.

It was one of those “where were you” moments. I know where I was. I was standing outside the McDonald’s on O’Connell Street in Dublin with a bag full of all my clothes and my broken 2011 Macbook that I borrowed from my little brother a few years earlier.

I was clutching my Galaxy S3 phone and pulling down on the old Twitter website on Munster’s account page as the game wore on, trying to look past the crack that went from the black dot of the front-facing camera down to the button at the bottom. At 2:53 on Saturday, October 18th 2014 this tweet popped up at the top of their page.

We still have – KEATS DROPGOAL!!! #SalVMun

— Munster Rugby (@Munsterrugby) October 18, 2014

For a minute, I forgot I had nowhere to sleep that night. Ian Keatley had won the game for Munster, sealing a comeback that looked pretty impossible earlier in the afternoon when I last checked my phone with the free wifi that was hanging in the air outside the bus stop near the Auld Triangle in Drumcondra.

That’s what Munster were always able to do. Make me forget. Later that night I would shuttle between the Burger King on O’Connell Street and the 24 hour McDonalds across the street so I had somewhere to sit. It was a Saturday night, so the people who were looking for a Big Mac after a night slinging pints and dropping shots were loud and raucous. In another life that would have been me. I sat there sneakily charging my phone with my bag on my lap in front of me and a by-now stone cold Euro-Saver meal hamburger I was nursing. I was just looking at my phone, scrolling through match reports, trying to forget.

Moments like that is why Munster is so important to me. In the days when I was trying to imagine another life, they were always front and centre. Any life but the one I was living.

Like, for example, in another life, I could have been over at the game in Sale going mad behind the goalposts with other Munster fans before heading off into the Manchester night to skull pints, chat shit, stagger back to the hotel and wake up sick as a dog in the morning for the flight back.

Instead I was in McDonalds trying to avoid getting noticed by a security guard by taking a nibble of a cold burger every 15 minutes just so I could sit down somewhere half-way warm and lose myself in Munster through a cracked screen.

When you’re broke and homeless and hopeless, your dreams are the only things you have. You don’t dream of winning the lotto. You dream of being normal. Like a bill comes in and wow, that’s saucy, but you pay it, complain for a while and then forget it. When you’re normal, you don’t realise that you can’t pay it and eat and pay rent, which means you have to stuff it somewhere you can put it out of your mind. You dream of making a casual decision to go to Thomond Park on a whim, drive in, have a meal somewhere before hand, get something nice at the match and then do whatever after the game without even thinking about it.

I had €5 in my pocket (€4 after the burger) and had nowhere to sleep that night, or any other night as far as I knew. Going to Thomond Park was a pipe dream. Affording a ticket was a pipe dream. But that’s what normal people did and I wanted so badly to be normal.

Everything is better now because, once again, Munster Rugby saved me through Three Red Kings. Who knows where I’d be without it. Dead, probably, which sounds grim but it’s probably true. Instead I’ve got various forms of poverty trauma, like the constant fear that when I boop my card at the till, it won’t boop properly because all my money has disappeared. That’s one of the milder ones. It’ll always be with me in one form or the other. Some of it is protective, some of it is caustic – you just have to live with it.

In three months, I hope to have a child of my own all going well. It won’t be long coming, everyone tells me. I’ve already made a silent promise to my baby that what happened to me won’t happen to them. But then I remember that my parents probably promised the same thing to me at some stage and it happened all the same. I can’t protect them from life because life is too complex and there are too many moving parts.

All I can do is love them and ensure that Munster Rugby never has to save their life, as best I can. But they will love Munster. I’ll take them to games with their mam, I’ll get there early so we can watch the warmup. We’ll get something to eat beforehand and then do whatever after the game. Hopefully we won’t even need to think about it.

That’s what Munster is to me, and so many other people. Something joyful, trophies or not. I know I forget that when results aren’t great or performances are rubbish. It doesn’t change my love for the province, for the jersey, for the fans or for the times Munster allowed me to forget. The cost of living these days is getting more and more expensive. So much so that it reminds me of worst times. Thankfully I’m far more capable now than I was then but hundreds of thousands of people are feeling the pinch and worse. When the price of diesel goes up – much like a fever – it means a lot of people are forced to choose what they do with their “free” time. And by “free” time, I mean the stuff you do when you’re not working that often costs money that you might not have.

Cinema? Costs money. A look around the shops? Costs money. Going for a spin? Costs money in fuel. Going for a meal? Costs money. Going to a match? Costs money.

Sometimes the card just isn’t up for the boop on that because you’ve got home heating oil to buy, diesel to put in the car and it’s more expensive this week than last week, a big electricity bill you’re fretting about, ever increasing bills at the supermarket and the gnawing worry that if something unplanned happens next month with everything else going up, you might not be able to afford it.

So when sports journalists talk about dropping attendances at games – which is happening all over the game – this is the context they seem to miss. The week to week reality of living in 2022 can squeeze out a few thousand people a week who otherwise might go to games because normal life gets in the way. The ultimate insult these sports journalists throw at fans is that “they’ve lost the faith”. When I read it, I go back to that McDonalds in my mind, I clutch my bag with everything I own inside it and I rage.

I’ve lost the fucking faith?

I’d be there if I could. If things were normal. If everything was cool, I’d be right there in Thomond Park.

All I have is faith.

I’m not saying that everyone who decides not to go to a game this weekend or next is doing it because they’re worried about money. Sometimes it’s the weather. Sometimes it’s not being arsed with a two hour drive up and back in bad weather. Sometimes someone is sick and you can’t go. Sometimes you’d rather just watch the game on TV because it’s been a long week. And maybe a small few people who Munster was never really that important to in the first place have a “malaise”. It takes all sorts.

When you accuse the rest of that, it hurts them. It hurts us. Because 19 times out of 20, it’s about real life getting in the way, not a lack of faith.

Because faith is all we have, and that faith is stronger than anyone knows.