SIX NATIONS NEWSIN LATE January the Irish rugby team booked into the Killiney Castle Hotel in south Dublin. By the time they check out of their rooms for good, it will be close to the middle of March with just England left to play in the final match of the Six Nations Championship.
Boredom has always been the enemy of the tournament athlete and the Six Nations every year tests the players and management to keep minds from fogging over from the daily diet of training, weights, rest, meals, media and team meetings.
Last weekend Andrew Trimble cut loose in his efforts to temporarily escape the slow drip of rugby and headed north to what may be his spiritual home in Portrush. There the Irish centre pulled on his six-millimetre neoprene wetsuit, hauled the board out of its winter slot and went surfing.
In one sense, given the potential for injury, it's a small gamble for Trimble to surf in Irish seas in winter. But players have always been allowed to do the things that keep their minds fresh even if the body is at risk. There is a critical balance to be struck.
"Definitely you need a couple of outlets," says the Ireland centre. "In the evenings here if Merv (Murphy, video analyst) had his way we'd be in watching videos of Wales every night."
Nine years ago, the PGA Tour golfer and winner of the 1999 Greg Norman Classic, Michael Long, suffered a broken neck at the C6 joint while surfing in Australia. Fortunately the player had no spinal-cord damage and resumed his career. He finished 53rd in last week's Johnny Walker Classic in India.
"I went up home because a few of my friends were about and did a fair bit of surfing on Saturday afternoon, which was nice apart from nearly drowning a couple of times," he says.
"Portrush, east strand Portrush. Six-millimetre suit with the hat the gloves, booties and everything on. You do spend so much time here in Killiney, in the Four Seasons, just in camp in training. It's just refreshing to get away from that, see different guys who are not involved in rugby.
"You just have different conversations that are not about rugby patterns and tackling and all that. It's something you look forward to, the wee breaks. It gets you going for the next week."
If anything, Trimble's diversion seems an eminently sensible distraction from what can be a suffocating and intense two months. Parsing his relationship with Brian O'Driscoll in the centre; explaining that wearing number 11, 13 and 14 shirts for Ireland is no big deal and feeling the backwash of the ongoing saga at fullback - whether Geordan Murphy or Girvan Dempsey will be fit to play - can be as wearing as any international fixture.
"If you are here the whole time it would just drain you," says Trimble. "Not that the guys here are boring or anything but you get sick of seeing the same faces day in day out. That's including you lot as well."
Observing the media-fuelled "rivalry" between his coach Eddie O'Sullivan and the Wales boss, Warren Gatland, is this week's favourite theme. Trimble's mildly sleepy demeanour doesn't falter when the "Gatland issue" is raised. He has learned quickly that O'Sullivan is himself well equipped to tread water in difficult conditions.
"I would say the whole thing about the coaches is a media thing really," he says. "It's nothing that's going to affect us. "When we get on the pitch, we're not thinking 'I have to make this tackle because Warren Gatland is their coach.' Certainly not the case. There's 30 guys on the pitch. I don't think that is going to affect you too much. The media are trying to spin that and make it into a story. All the best to them. I never have (met Gatland), never had any dealings with him."
And then he returns to the original theme: "There's nothing worse than sitting around bored."
Good luck to him. It may take him out of harm's way, away from those lethal remote controls. Pull on the wetsuit, lad. Hit the surf.
