Socio-cultural documents come in all shapes and forms. I recently picked up this Murphy’s Stout beermat on eBay for 50c. It’s a simple but lovely example of commercial advertising meshing with utterly shameless Cork/Munster triumphalism.

Cork-based Murphy’s – a competitor of Guinness’s in the stout market – produced these beermats to mark Munster Rugby‘s famous defeat of the All-Blacks in Thomond Park in 1978. Books have been written and documentaries made about this unexpected 12-0 victory. It is still talked about in reverent tones in Limerick and Cork and became a key component of Munster Rugby’s sense of itself.