Locker Room:The Sports Editor has moods at this time of the year and it's best to avoid him. Lots of his conversation begin with the words "You know what I'm going to get you to do a bit more of this year . . . " You'd best be at the lift and waving goodbye by the time he gets that far because there is no happy ending to that sentence. In fact there is no ending to that sentence which can't be translated into a single word. Work.
So he tries to sugar the pill. He puts some chocolate on the crappy end of the stick. Pick your own metaphor. First it was off to San Marino because "I don't think you've ever been there before". Pleading fatigue, terminal ennui and sheer alienation this column had avoided the first two away trips of the Staunton era. We are on the cusp of an era where the international soccer team's doings will once again merit sending just one reluctant reporter from each newspaper but part of the transition involves the need to send two, just in case there is a spectacular disaster. Like last Wednesday. So San Marino was unavoidable.
Most of us, except the players and Stan (and his uncle John Delaney who gives Stan a shiny shilling if his team wins) were glad we went. Wednesday night in San Marino was an unseasonal pantomime. From Robbie Keane's epic sulkiness to San Marino's slapstick goal right through to Stan deadpanning those one liners at his press conference afterwards, it was funny.
"It was a gamble to come to San Marino in February," said Stan. I don't care how much you whinge about the loss to Irish football that Brian Kerr was or how you came down on Saipan, that remark has to be one of the best off the cuff witticisms any manager has ever made while under pressure.
We'd expected that Stan might try the old " no easy games in international football" gag or perhaps "sometimes a team plays down to the level of the opposition and that happened San Marino tonight" - but no he came up with a whole new slant on it. Bravo! By the time we'd landed back in Ireland the mobile phones were buzzing with the jokes about the GAA not having to worry about fertilizing the Croker pitch after the rugby because Stan would be putting a pile of shite on it next month and we chuckled to ourselves. Then we stared down along the airport carousel at the FAI nabobs and wondered how the hunt for the world class manager could have turned the national team into a joke within the space of a few months.
No time for too much wondering, though, because among the more dastardly of the Sports Editor's New Year's resolutions was getting this column to go up the road to Croke Park to watch a rugby international. This he justified with a sort of Clintonian logic, suggesting that "it's really a GAA occasion." Eventually a compromise was reached. Having extracted a guarantee that no tickets would be available for the England game in two weeks time, we agreed to go.
(For 12 or 13 years this column has discovered the means to enjoying the earlier months of the year by deploying the simplest of ruses. An occasional column twitting the rugby fraternity and their boyish ways has always been sufficient to draw down enough fatwahs and stern letters from the Taliban of the unamused in Dublin 4. Just enough to have this column mercifully sidelined from all rugby coverage. Until yesterday).
What we saw at Croke Park yesterday was truly shocking. Firstly how little of the traffic going to the match was coming from the actual northside. Meaghers of Fairview was quiet. Gaffney's had hardly a stir in it. I had to drive the kids almost to town before I let them out to go and steal hub caps from the posh cars.
Back in Croker we had to show a swipe-card-type accreditation at the door before we could advance to the lift. Up in the press working room (yeah, yeah contradiction in terms, I know) where so often we true Gaels have gathered to discuss the manly pursuits of other true Gaels, there were rugby hacks all eating fine dinners off plates. Now! A GAA hack has to kiss a hell of a lot of ass before he can get a chicken stuffing sandwich in there on a match day. My letter of apology to the IRFU for the misunderstandings which may have been ensued from previous columns is in the post.
Anyway looking back over our shoulder longingly we were led away then not to the press box itself but to an "overflow area" where all the regular GAA hacks were being deposited as part of the sanitization of the official press box. You got shown into this overflow area and as you entered you saw all the familiar faces. It was like being one of the long-distance lorry drivers who get duped in that Carlsberg ad. We said nothing to each other of the gourmet meals we'd seen.
Looking around we could see five French men together in the upper deck of the Canal End all dressed in salmon pink blazers and white caps. They looked like New Orleans pimps or the less sober side element of the European Ryder Cup team.
Elsewhere was a greasy sea of Barbour jackets. The rugby folk have such a love of the old Barbour jackets that there'll be knock-off versions on sale along Ballybough and Summerhill next time out.
And lots of silly hats. The Irish seems to enjoy looking like rugby balls and the French don't miss a chance to look like cockerels.
It's a different country at a rugby match. It really is. Personally I loved the plummy announcer who for the visually impaired who couldn't see the biggest scoreboards in Europe came on to announce the scores after each try or penalty. Ireland 11 France 13.
And then the capper Irlande Onze La Fronce Treise. Magnifique! And when it came to substitutions he was masterful. Translating only the French substitutions the clever chap would announce: Heymans for Poitrenaud and then pause before intoning gravely, Heymans pour Poitrenaud! I noticed that when Ronan O'Gara scored his try. When a goal is scored at a GAA game or a soccer match there's lepping and hugging and fisting of the air and all the rest of it. Rugby is different though. Rugby people turn to each other and make these faces as if they are saying: "Look at me. Look at how bloody happy I am. I'm going to bloody shout something at Ronan now. Good boy roany, good boy." Women have a different role in rugby civilization as well. Although, ahem derided and dehumanised in bawdy ballads, the rugby woman seems to make the cut for big-match tickets. Which is very enlightened.
(We expect out of respect for local custom that in two weeks time many of the visiting women will visit the small convenience stores of Summerhill while wearing pyjamas in the afternoon. It would be a nice gesture). Anyway the women in front of us were the most enthusiastic I have ever seen. One of them noted loudly at half-time that the goys were going to get a total bawl-aw-king from Eddie, while a Barbour babe almost leap to her premature death after a long drive by the Irish pack about 10 minutes from the end.
Afterwards the big cars (what few of them were risked in injun country) and the coaches all whisked away pretty quickly. We got a few hub caps but the house prices on our road started tumbling again. (You get about a three-hour window where the tone of the area shoots up!). It wasn't as emotional a day as everyone had convinced themselves it would be. We were anguished a few times when the chaps didn't seem to be taking it handy on the grass, there's a hurling final to be played there next month and King Henry likes a nice turf.
Still quite a week. All over now bar the shouting or as the man might say, Fin.
