Brian Ashton ran his fingers over the top of his head, producing a sensation not dissimilar to that of assessing a bowling ball, and reflected that a year ago his scalp was late Beatles. Liam Gallagher now had more hair in one of his eyebrows than he had on his entire head. Could he have been in Ireland merely a year? It seemed as if he had spent an entire geological age here, continents separating and fishes emerging, developing hands and lungs and inventing civilisation and sport, while Irish rugby had undergone reverse evolution, back to primordial slime.
He should have guessed he was in trouble that time the survivors of the annual Kingstown Presbyterian Knitting and Sewing Circle outing to the Wicklow mountains had tottered onto the training pitch, with Prudence and Primrose Entwhistle bearing the dead body of their brother Mervyn, Captain, Royal Army Pay Corps, Ret'd, who'd expired from the effects of frostbite and Alzeimer's near the Sally Gap.
Practice game Prudence and Primrose had offered to give the chaps a bit of a practice game. Their friend Muriel ffrench-ffrench, who had lost a leg in a riding accident during the school hols at the time of all that unpleasantness with the Larkin fellow, would play full-back. The Rowbotham twins, Hope and Charity, played centre, and on the wing, sporting two new hips, was their youngest sister Faith. Agatha Witherspoon, whose feet had never quite recovered after that business with the elephant at the great durbah in Bombay back in '06, played at out-half in a wheelchair.
The Irish squad kicked off, the ball going to Algy Pemberton, who had lost a leg on the retreat from Mons. Actually, having just a single peg enabled Algy to jink pretty niftily through a floundering defence before passing inside to Rev Hubert McAughtermochty, who slipped it to his guide dog Rex, who scored in the corner. Rex then converted.
That first kick-off turned out to be the only time play occurred in the Kingstown half. Every subsequent kick-off by the Ireland XV went directly into touch, one even clearing the stand and whizzing near a soldier in McKee barracks who, deafened by the din of the passing ball, sued and won, and is now the owner of Kildare and parts of Meath, courtesy of IRFU funds. But the failure to kick off correctly hadn't been the most disappointing feature of the game. No, that had been the final try by Major Mervyn Entwhistle, Royal Army Pay Corps, Ret'd, who was able to overcome the combined effects of death to score a try in the corner.
Poor decision
That match was merely a foretaste of what was to follow. Despite what he had seen in the match against the Kingstown XV, Brian plumped for the original Irish team, assuming that it had had an off-day. As decisions go, it was poor, though the next match was against Nepalese Sherpas who had practised on a table-tennis table in the King's Palace, that being the only flat surface available in the entire kingdom. The sherpas, who had turned up at Lansdowne Road with bats and pads, under the impression that they were going to play cricket, won by a clear hundred points.
No matter. The Kinshasa Retirement Home for Aged and Leprous Pygmies, who between them mustered just 12 complete limbs, must surely provide more congenial opposition for a squad now on £20,000 a man - and indeed, so it proved for a good while. The Zairean XV score was kept well within two figures until close to half-time, when alas, the 12 complete limbs proved to be too powerful for the 60 arms and legs of the Irish XV. Perhaps the most depressing moment had been when the Zairean full-back, borne on a litter by three legless infants, had escaped the tackles of the entire Irish team before scoring under the posts. The litter converted the try. The Irish kick-off concussed the American Ambassador in Phoenix Park.
Golden age
Yet, in retrospect, this could be seen as the golden age of Irish rugby. A new team on even higher bonuses was selected for the game against Pro-Life, which fielded an Unborn XV, none of whom even had names, and the youngest of whom had been conceived only that morning behind a shed in Ballyfermot. The Irish kick-off broke a window in Liberty Hall. From the scrum, a foetal-back broke through several Irish tackles and scored under the posts.
Brian had thought he'd reached the low point of his career with that match. He had not. Far worse was the encounter with the 15 BSE heifers. A rout. But then so too was the match against the frogspawn. Did that compare with the defeat by the 15 dead hedgehogs scraped off the Navan road? It was hard to say.
He drew himself up. It was time to select a new team for Ireland.
He had made a decision. He began to pencil in a few names. Full-back, ffrench-ffrench. Front row, Prudence and Primrose Entwhistle as props, Mervyn's cadaver as hooker. The centres would of course be the Rowbotham twins, with Faith on the wing. Algy Pemberton would be scrumhalf, Agatha Witherspoon outhalf. Second row, Rev McAughtermochty and Rex. Yes! The core of a team was there. The hour of glory of Kingstown Presbyterian Knitting and Sewing Circle was come, and Ireland's rugby fortunes would finally begin to improve.