The ceremony for the World Cup draw in Auckland on Saturday morning was around an hour-ish old when Republic of Ireland defender Hayley Nolan threw a glance towards her watch. She wasn’t due to kick off for London City Lionesses in their Championship game against Sunderland until noon on Sunday, but at the rate the Auckland proceedings were going, she was probably worried that she’d miss the first half.
There were traditional Maori and Aboriginal dances and tunes, video montages telling us about all nine host cities, speeches from New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, Australia’s sports minister Anika Wells, Fifa president Gianni Infantino and Fifa secretary general Fatma Samoura, chats with the eight ball-pluckers (or “draw assistants”, to give them their official title) and sundry revelry.
By now, excited as she was, Nolan might have regretted agreeing to Sky Sports News’s request that she join them at the crack of dawn, not least because she could have napped for another couple of hours and still have been there in plenty of time to see Ireland put into a group with co-hosts Australia and Olympic champions Canada, before being joined by Nigeria, the highest ranked team in pot four.
“Welcome to my world, Vera,” Stephen Kenny [Netherlands, France and Greece!] might well have wept into his cornflakes.
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But not even a draw that tricky could curb Nolan’s enthusiasm, even when her host Anton Toloui suggested to her that Ireland would rack up more miles than Jules Verne during the group stage of the tournament.
“You’re going to kick off against the hosts on the opening day of the tournament. Then you travel to Perth to take on Canada — that’s a 2½-thousand mile trip! And Then it’s on to Brisbane to play Nigeria. There’s going to be a lot of travel there!”
“Hayley,” you half expected him to add, “do you now regret qualifying for the World Cup?”
He didn’t, of course, and he meant well, need it be said, but by now Hayley might have been tempted to point out that “we have been on planes before, you know”.
Instead, the Kildare woman gently reminded Toloui that travel is “part and parcel of playing football — we have to try and get it out of our heads and just focus on the games”. Besides, if she had to travel from Kildare to Jupiter and back to play in the World Cup, she’d be fine and dandy with it. Happy days.
The ceremony concluded with World Cup mascot Penguin Tazuni and four footballers bopping about manically on stage, Nolan by then just hoping to make injury time in London City’s Sunday game.
Elsewhere? Hard to know where to start, really. Ireland beat the West Indies in cricket and lost to Lebanon in rugby league, so every expectation you ever had about likely sporting outcomes proved wrong.
“This is an absolute mauling,” as our commentator Preston Mommsen said of our boys’ T20 World Cup pulverising of the Windies, the only more entertaining sight than Paul Stirling’s 66 being the Irish in the crowd in Hobart, several wearing mini-Leprechaun hats, dancing along to Jump Around, which the lovely DJ played between overs. Sure look it, it had the rest of us bopping around our couches too.
Leigh Sports Village, though, proved to be a house of pain for our rugby league lads who lost 32-14 to Lebanon in the World Cup. For those of us who didn’t know Lebanon had even heard of rugby league, never mind playing it at international level, this was a surprise.
“You look grumpy,” the BBC’s Tanya Arnold said to former Irish international Kyle Amor come full-time. “I’m a little bit emotional about it right now,” he said, “I feel almost embarrassed that I talked Ireland up.”
Lebanon’s coach, though, was beaming. Michael Cheika. You might have heard of him?
Leinster folk would know of him all right, but they’re probably content enough with their current gaffer, Leo Cullen, after they saw off the challenge of Munster on Saturday despite being without a string of mega names, among them Tadhg Furlong.
“We’re the best team in the world and he’s our Lionel Messi,” Donncha O’Callaghan told Jacqui Hurley during RTÉ’s coverage of the encounter. “He has footwork like Michael Flatley, he has hands like Mary Berry. He is different gravy.”
Hands like Mary Berry? If Furlong lives forever, he’ll receive no finer tribute. Still, struggling to see him assemble a Wexford strawberry meringue roulade.
