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Stuart Taylor had a lucky escape in Wednesday’s hurricane when a 60ft tree came crashing down yards from where he was standing.

The Limerick FC manager and a club official had stopped their car near the club office to help another motorist remove fallen trees blocking the road.

But as they were doing so, a monster tree uprooted and smashed onto an unoccupied van 10 feet from where they were standing.

Amazingly, nobody was hurt.

“It was freakish, very scary stuff,” Taylor told Mirror Sport .

“I’m used to the bad weather in Scotland but this was something else.”

Airports were closed, a stationary plane on a runway tipped onto its side and over 260,000 people were left without power in the worst blackout for 15 years.

Rooftops were ripped clean off buildings, city centre streets turned into rivers and a leading racecourse was completely submerged.

Derry City boss Roddy Collins said: “You would pull your hair out some days when a match gets postponed a few hours before kick-off.

“That’s happened to us three times now and it means we’re not getting the competitive workout on grass that we would like at this stage of pre-season.

“But even though the weather has been brutal, we haven’t missed a session to be fair. We’ve had to play 11 v 11 amongst ourselves sometimes which isn’t ideal.”

Limerick boss Taylor had to cancel a sessionon Wednesday because of the storm, although only one of his pre-season games has been called off due to the weather.

He said: “There’s some people still calling for a change back to winter football - at least this is only

pre-season that it’s affecting.”