Perhaps tellingly, perhaps not, Stephen O’Brien elected to remain seated during the Mass. He sat at the back, among the Merrion Park boys. He too wore sunglasses. He didn’t take them off during the service.

When the Mass was over, Pat Kilroy stood to speak.

Pat Kilroy was the principal of Brookfield College. He had been the coach of the Senior Cup team for nearly ten years. He had coached them to the 2002 victory over Michael’s. He knew Conor Harris and Richard Culhane and Barry Fox as though they were his sons.

Pat Kilroy had asked the Harrises if he could speak at Conor’s funeral. Eileen said no. Brendan said yes.

Pat Kilroy (‘Mr Kilroy’ to generations of rank-and-file Brookfield students, ‘Pat’ to parents and to the boys on the SCT) stood at the lectern and looked down at the congregation with the sides of his mouth lowered in a clownish moue. He wore a black suit, and a tie in the Brookfield colours. He was losing the hair above his forehead in triangular notches. He was a Clare man in his fifties, and he had the reckless stance of the teacher who is used to being obeyed, the comfortable slouch, the confident hands.

Off the pitch, Mr Kilroy’s was a relaxed authority, I’ve heard. Most of the time he was genial and proud, two qualities, according to the boys, deserving of respect and admiration. ‘But you don’t want to piss him off,’ Barry Fox said once. ‘You just don’t want him as an enemy, like.’

Pat Kilroy stood at the gleaming lectern. People coughed and whispered.

‘We were all,’ he began, ‘deeply saddened when we heard of Conor’s death.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Saddened for his parents, first of all. But saddened for ourselves, too. Saddened, because we recognized that Brookfield – and by extension, the country – had lost one of its great players. Not a potentially great player. But the real, achieved thing, never mind his youth and his lack of professional experience. Conor wasn’t one of those boys who went on to play for the university when his time came to leave us. But I think we all expected him to return to the game at some point, to relive past glories and to attain to new ones.’

He cleared his throat again. He leaned on the lectern with peremptory gusto, but his voice rasped humidly with trapped phlegm.

‘As you all know,’ he said, ‘rugby is very much a part of our way of life at Brookfield. And during Conor’s time at the school, I think I could have found no greater example of a student who took that way of life to heart than Conor Harris.’

I remember thinking, What about Richard Culhane? And I know that half the people around me were thinking the same thing.

‘In his dedication,’ Pat Kilroy said, ‘his sportsmanship, his courtesy on and off the pitch, his drive and commitment, Conor Harris was an example to us all.’