Maureen’s present is wrapped in green
IT was the trip of a lifetime for soccer-mad mom, Maureen Guerin, from Tralee when her son Anthony took her to Paris to cheer on the boys in green as part of a special birthday celebration on Monday night.
While there was ectasy, followed by agony across Kerry on Monday night as Ireland were caught by an unlucky own goal to leave it honours even, Maureen was cherring on her heroes at Stade Francais.
Maureen is 70 years young this year and a lifelong supporter of the Irish and Manchester United teams - as well as being an avid follower of Kerry teams. In short, it’s pretty safe to say Maureen is ‘sports mad’ and choosing the perfect birthday gift was made easy this year, thanks to Ireland’s participation in the European Championships.
Birthday girl Maureen even had a packed O’Sullivan’s Pub in Paris sing ‘ happy birthday’ to her live on air as Today FM hosted a packed house full of Irish fans celebrating in style.
Maureen also joined in with Anthony as part of a ‘sing off ’ competition to win a Tony Cascarino T-shirt – and like all Irish mammies, ‘ they could kill you’ for making such a fuss.
“It was a complete surprise and I never knew they had this trip planned. But I’ll kill Anthony for making my birthday known in the pub in Paris,” Maureen said.
“Even though I don’t like all the fuss, this is something that I always wanted to do and I loved it. Although, if I knew it was going to happen the way it did, I wouldn’t have went at all! I also had a photo taken with Kevin Moran on the night which was great,” added an overjoyed Maureen.
And as for the man responsible? “We wanted to bring mom over to the Euros and this trip was planned since last December. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip made better by the fantastic Swedish fans,” Anthony said.
Meanwhile, the Healy Rae bandwagon rolled into France with a tongue-in-cheek flag unfurled outside the stadium which went viral on Facebook
(right). And back home the pubs were rocking (top right).