Behind the scenes at Lansdowne Road

I was stewarding at Lansdowne last Saturday for the Celtic Cup final. After an entertaining 1st half of good rugby but a disappointing 2nd, Munster came out on top with a 27-16 victory over Llanelli Scarlets[1].

I've been stewarding at quite a few matches this season – it's a great way to be guaranteed a ticket for the big international games (Six Nations: England and France at home this year) and big European games (Leinster vs Leicester – the less said the better). I'm also guaranteed a great view, normally from the West Upper just above the camera nests.

The downside of it is having to be at the stadium 3 hours before the scheduled kick-off time (yeah, you read that correctly – three hours!), which is quite a long time to be standing around. I've gotten the organisation down – to be comfortable on a cold day I need woolly hat, gloves, warm jacket, small radio (both for match commentary and pre-match boredom), sandwiches and a drink of some sort. And generally it's too hard to carry a bag, so I end up looking like I weight 300lbs (instead of my actual ~220) because of all the stuff in my pocketssss (Gollum would have a good time riddling with me).

Once the earliest fans start arriving 70-80 mins before kick-off things become more entertaining – there's no sport in the world with fans better than in rugby for their good natured bantering and discussion of the game with their opponents, the man in the street, and the steward in the stand.



Lansdowne Road in glorious May sunshine. Not as impressive as Croker by a long shot unfortunately. Taken from the south west corner looking north east.



My fellow stewards standing around under the West stand about 2 hours before kick-off. Quite cold in the shade!



Some of the Scarlets players just after the game. I was on the pitch, protecting them from crazed fans, somehow found time to get a picture or 2…

1. (For those unfamiliar with Welsh placenames, Llanelli is pronounced something like “cthlan-ehcth-li”)

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Dublin’s easy start to the Championship

I joined 38,800 people on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon here in Dublin, as the Boys in Blue literally had a walk in the park against Longford in the first round of the Leinster GAA Championship. Their 2-23 to 10 points victory was described in one paper as “ritual slaughter, mortification, a complete cakewalk”. It's unfortunate that Longford did not put up a better fight, as our next match is a tough one against the old enemy, Meath.

The new Hill 16 was sky blue and sung loud as ever before. One can easily see why the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) are so proud of Croke Park.

Pics courtesy of my new toy, an o2 xda2 (Intel Xscale PXA263 400MHz, 128Mb + 1gb MMC).

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Thanks Kryptonite

I wanted to say a big thank you to Kryptonite, who have made good on their promise to replace my vulnerable ulock for free. I received my brand new orange Evolution 2000 ulock recently but neglected to mention it here until now.

Companies like Kryptonite who go out of their way to provide good customer service should be praised publically to encourage others to take the same path (many other lock manufacturers have vulnerable locks and have made no such gesture). I wholeheartedly recommend them for your bike security needs 🙂

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Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

I'm a hooker and love it. The rough and tumble of the front row is a fantastic place to be.

I play for Clontarf FC, a large rugby club here in Dublin. I play for our J4 side, which is way way way down the leagues – we're the 5th adult mens team in the club. We play for the love of the game and try not to take it too seriously.

We've been doing quite well this season, with 6 wins from our first 6 games. Two weeks ago we had a first loss, which was unfortunate, but it was to the only other unbeaten team in our league. We put more points against them than all of their other opponents collectively. This kind of defeat is disappointing, but you can turn around and admit to being beaten by a better team – it doesn't hurt so much.

Last night we fielded a pretty good team against AIB – one of Irelands largest banks. We led the game for 79 of the 80 minutes, being ahead by 14 pts to 3 at one stage. Somehow in the last 20 we managed to lose the plot, and conceding 3 scores and the the game.

We did not keep possession well. We had 35-45% during most of the game, and only had the ball for about 5 minutes out of the last 20. We didn't have ball because either we lost it in contact, or we kicked. Some of our kicking game was good but there was a good breeze, and we didn't make touch, thus giving them possession and room to play with.

Losing the ball in ruck contact was the one glaringly obvious mistake. Our backs took the ball into contact, held it up for a split second, and we (the forwards) didn't clean it properly. A lot of the time we were getting there, but not setting it up, bridging and giving controlled ball to our scrumhalf.

I talked to the ref after about the number of penalties at the ruck (maybe 8 or 9 I'd say). He seemed to have one main concern in reffing, particularly at this level – safety. He sees us coming in over the ruck dangerously he's immediately going to blow us up. We need to control the ruck with guys in pillar positions, and clear out the tacklers while staying on our feet.

There were some good points: our tackling was quite good. The forwards were getting to the breakdown on time – we just needed to do the right thing when we got there. Our scrum was good for the most part. Our maul was relatively good. Our scrumhalf dealt excellently with the sloppy ball he was getting, with great passes to #10. We dominated the game in spells, but didn't put it together to kill it off.

I'm gutted that we lost it from 14-3.

I'm not going to make to training tonight, I'm still carrying some injuries. I'll take a couple days off, head to the West of Ireland tomorrow night, and spend a long Paddys weekend there.

Hopefully Ireland can cheer me up on Saturday and beat Wales by 15-20 points to win the 6N. But I'll settle for a Triple Crown 🙂

For the gamblers out there (I'm not one,
and #include ), I do know that France at 18-1 against for the 6N is not a bad deal. They need to beat Italy by 40+, and hope that Ireland beat Wales, but by a small margin. Quite plausible.

Enjoy Paddy's day y'all.

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Super Bowl XXXIX

I'm delighted to say that I had vested interest here – both sides. A cousin in Lawrence, and a great-grandmother from Lowell, Mass, and my grandfather's family all being from Philly: I've visited both areas in the last few years.

I must admit to being very impressed with the bluegrass fiddler playing before the game – can anyone tell me more about this guy? A comment about the pre-game: were I either coach, I would be pretty unhappy about having my team out on the pitch for that long before the game – it could distract and destroy careful mental preparation… I guess these guys are pros and this is the Super Bowl, but it's a long time to stand around. The price the NFL pays for millions of TV dollars?

The game itself was an interesting parallel of the Italy-Ireland game of earlier – the favourites on the back foot throughout the first half, with the pretenders crucially failing to score. Superb defense on both sides. Then in the second half we saw the sheer class of the favourites.

I was disappointed in McNabb and the Eagles' Offense on their final drive – I believe they threw away a great chance through particularly bad time management that (I'm guessing) would scarcely be seen at high school level. Maybe the stress of the occasion (you should have listened to TO and relaxed, Donavan!).

Congratulations to the New England Patriots, commiserations to the Eagles – I hope to see them competiting at the end of the next regular season.

Miscellaneous thoughts: I must admit to a wry smile when I hear the phrase “World Champions” in relation to the Super Bowl and other American sports – well, at least the NHL involves a second country! Are 2unlimited making an absolute fortune from the NFL? I hear them in the background at every game – cringeworthy. Are there no limits?

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Diary of a sports addict

Being a sports geek, I was in my element this past weekend. Rugby’s Six Nations tournament kicked off – this is an annual competition where the 4 “Home Nations” of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales play against each other, our Gallic cousins, France, and the Six Nations newcomers, Italy. This years tournament has been billed as the most open competition in years, with the reigning Rugby World Champions England in disarray after several bad results, with the traditionally strong French (current Six Nations Champions) also off the boil, and last years runners up (but Triple Crown winners), Ireland, in excellent form. Wales and Scotland both
showed good form during the autumn internationals against the southern hemisphere visitors, South Africa and the mighty All Blacks.

Stade de France, early on Saturday afternoon, found itself host to the first game of the tournament. With France being off form, and Scotland wooden-spoon favourites, this was not expected to be a classic, and lived up to its billing. However, it did manage to create much controversy. A lucky French side scraped passed Scotland after some dubious calls from the match officials, including a disallowed try upon which Scotland’s fate hinged. Unfortunate and disappointing – rugby’s superb officiating (normally far superior to that of almost any other field sport) may have let us down on this occasion. The Scottish management team strongly agree. Final score: 16-9 to France.

Wales – England was the second game, starting a useful 2 hours after the first game ended (thanks to the BBC for their fantastic scheduling!). England were just about favourites for this one, Wales having proved themselves recently with some good performances, notably their single point loss to New Zealand in November. Against expectations, Wales took the lead 4 minutes from time, with a fantastic penalty from their new star Gavin Henson, to take a dramatic win at 11-9.

After watching the first 2 games, particularly noting the poor kicking at goal and bad performances from England and France, I was feeling quite confident about Irelands chances in 6N 2005. Wales are an unknown, but we have them in Cardiff, and we always beat them in Cardiff – well, since 1983 anyway 🙂

Set up for a strong Irish performance as we were, we knew the Italians would be tough – they have a very powerful pack and have consistently improving lately. We expected a hard game. Little did we realise just how hard…

Italy played brilliantly, the best I’ve ever seen them. They rucked mauled and scrummaged us off the park, were consistently faster to the breakdown, and adapted to the law changes better than we did. Our pack was slow and ineffective, and our backline received very little ball. Luckily for us, our backline are on another level, and don’t necessarily require a whole lot to turn a match on its head. O’Driscoll is rugby genius personified, regardless of how much we dislike his haircut. It’s easy to recognise his calibre: he simply makes it all look so easy.

So it almost brought me to tears to see both O’Driscoll and D’Arcy, his centre partner, go down with suspected torn hamstrings, and their associated 6-8 week recovery period: the last game of the 6N is March 13th! Thankfully today, after scans on Monday evening, Eddie O’Sullivan announced that the pair “came through their scans last night, and it looks as if things aren’t as bad as we originally thought”. Great news!

What abouty the result against Italy? Well, that was a fairly close 28-17 to Ireland, and we’re still in the hunt for a Grand Slam this year thanks to our wonderful backs.

An interesting start to the tournament – we’ll see how the games go this week, with Ireland in Edinburgh and Wales in Rome on Saturday, and England away to France on Sunday.

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