Thursday 19^th January

In unison Pete and I suggested that the landscape reminded us of Anglesey: low hills sloped away from the dual carriageway running from Shannon airport; hedgerows and stone walls separated fields that were mostly populated with scrubby little bushes, like diminutive black sheep; a few stands of trees poked up amongst the rolling fields; and squat, pebble-dashed cottages stood isolated at eccentric angles to the road.  It was a raw, unpolished place.  For all the similarity, the obvious difference in all this with Anglesey was the sight of the odd, narrow castle here and there.  One of these relics was romantically dilapidated with ivy partially covering and devouring the crumbling walls.

‘It’s hard for young people to afford houses now,’ our taxi driver said as we passed.  ‘They charge some savage prices.’

He was hoping to buy an old building that needed renovation and fix it up to pass on to his children, to help them get started.  How he would find the wherewithal for that on a taxi driver’s money, we weren’t sure.  Perhaps he was a secret lottery winner.  One of the first things he had talked about was getting tickets for the game and he claimed that some were going for €800 each.  These days, it would seem, you have to be rich to live in Ireland.

Dropping Pete, Jill and I off at the hotel he wished us luck – but not too much – and told us to give him a call when we were heading back to the airport.  We entered reception – a huge pyramid structure.  It was some sort of seventies monstrosity and it looked hard to dust, an impression that seemed to be confirmed by the Gothic encrustations of cobwebs that hung from the bronzed wooden panelling of the ceiling.  It was a large and airy space anyway, with plenty of comfy-looking settees and armchairs to while away the time.

We had managed to be amongst the front-runners in arriving at the hotel and were soon heading up the corridor to our rooms.  I had just dumped my bags in mine when Pete called out.  Just inside the door of his room, filling the space from floor to ceiling, were stacks of boxed televisions.  There was no way to pass them and the narrow gap between them and the walls seemed to show that there were more stretching right into the room.  It was a tough choice whether to load up a van or just shut the door.  In the end Pete took a photograph and showed the girls at reception.

‘Lord,’ they said, ‘they were meant to be moved out this morning.’

He was given a new room – with only one, unboxed television – and we retired again to ours.  While mine seemed perfectly pleasant and was a good size, there was a minor problem or two in the bathroom.  The hot tap in the bath was dripping vigorously – or more exactly trickling – and was impossible to turn off.  Clearly this had been left unremediated for a long time, judging by the accretions of limescale around the side of the bath and the stalagmite developing in the plughole.  It reminded me of Mother Shipton’s Cave in Knaresborough and it crossed my mind that I should leave a cuddly toy or a glove hanging there to see if it had become petrified by the end of my stay.  The other problem in the bathroom was the radiator – unlike the bath tap, the tap on the radiator spun freely, though without having any sensible effect on the flow of heat.  I shut the door and decided that I could live with it as it was.

More important matters were pressing, namely getting across the car park to the pub next door – a brightly coloured place called Thady O’Neill’s (pronounced Tay-dee, and possibly short for Thomas according to one waitress, who was bewildered by our question: ‘I’ve never met him,’ she said with an apologetic smile).  Inside were a series of randomly sized rooms in one of which we found Riggers getting stuck into his first Guinness.  This seemed like a good idea so Pete and I joined in.  Whatever the marketing people say, it’s very definitely a different drink over there.  It was sweet and light with a satisfying chocolatey taste and burnt aftertaste.  It was all I could do not to drink it down in one big gulp.  Instead I supped carefully while we made our introductions to the advance drinking party, including the Riggers (of course), CheadleEnder, Major Bloodnok, Moonbeam, Pink Lady and Blondie, to mention a few.

After a couple of pints and a pleasant talk, we organised taxis and made our way into Limerick for the first time, heading to the Pier One bar at the Sarsfield Bridge Hotel, where we were to meet up with more of the travelling support.  The suburbs of the town continued to exhibit an Anglesey-like appearance.  Perhaps the weather conditions are similar and force a certain type of sturdy grey building on the populace.  Nearer town, at a roundabout by the tech college, a sign welcomed us with the news that Limerick was ‘the home of Irish rugby.’  It’s not the type of sign you’d see in Stockport.  The driver taking us this route (including a brief glimpse of Thomond Park) was a little more taciturn than the earlier one, but he was still happy to chat about rugby and about the town.  He denied Limerick’s tough reputation, claiming it was the Dublin-based media’s bias.

‘If you watch the Irish news you’d think there was nowhere else but Dublin.  It’s all Dub-Dub-Dub.’

Crossing over the Sarsfield Bridge slowly through the dreadful traffic we got our first proper look at the Shannon.  It was certainly broad, but less majestic than furious.  It must have been low tide because the fast flowing water bounded and churned its way along, full of mad unstoppable energy, tumbling over rocks and falls like a rampant pack of forwards over rucks and mauls.

We stayed for a couple of rounds in the Pier One, watching the smokers in the party deal with the bar’s compromise with the country’s no-smoking policy: a small, separate, glass-walled room open to the elements.  The gang had swollen in size and we spread awkwardly round a few tables but made conversation and drank as best we could.  A number of us moved on to Clohessy’s next – run by legendary Irish prop Peter Clohessy, or the Claw (in a Limerick accent the first syllable does sound like ‘claw’).  It was a big barn of a place and quite trendily styled, as was the Pier One.  Clohessy’s, however, was covered in rugby memorabilia: shirts, posters and a large pair of rubber claws.  We bumped into Gallon and Gillop and, being big lads, they demonstrated a simple solution to Jill’s worry that she wouldn’t get a clear view of the game from the terraces.  Standing either side of her they hauled her aloft by the elbows, leaving her feet dangling in midair.  There were more attempts at lifting when Scuba joined us and acted out Riggers’s slightly beer-hampered effort at lifting him by the lapels.  As we stood at the bar having a laugh, a solidly built, gruff-sounding Irish bloke with a bristling grey moustache  and a Munster coat on approached us and said – for reasons he would not divulge – that he had promised to buy drinks for the first five or six Sale fans he encountered, and we were them.  It would have been impolite to refuse, so we didn’t.

We talked to him for a while about the match, ticket availability and all the usual topics.  However, it had been a long time since we’d eaten so Pete, Jill and I left to find food, considering it a good idea to soak up some of the beer.  On the street we passed Scuba and Hippy who recommended the Texas Steak Out on O’Connell Street, which is where we took ourselves and enjoyed some excellent lumps of beef.

Being the first night we wanted to check out the town so, instead of returning to Clohessy’s, we called in at some other likely-looking pub just off the main street: Flannery’s.  It was very quiet, frequented mostly by old blokes.  No Sale fans in sight.  We sat at the bar and talked with just about everyone who passed by.  A youngish fella along the bar was the chattiest.  He was Belgian but had been in Ireland for 11 years and spoke with an Irish accent.  To him goes the honour of being the first person to mention Munster’s defeat of the All Blacks in 1979 and how it characterises the Thomond Park spirit.  The other blokes discussed our chances – graciously accepting the old saying that a record, like Munster’s 10 year unbeaten home one in the HEC, has to be broken at some point.  One had lived in Manchester for a time: he lived near and drank in the Clarence in Rusholme.  Another gave a dire warning that if we were to go over to Nancy Blake’s – a pub on my list of places to go – we should take a taxi as it was rough round there.  Time would tell that this was an unfounded concern, and I wondered whether I’d misheard or misremembered the name, or if he had made the mistake.

We moved on anyway to the pub next door: Myles Breen’s.  This was another traditional place: all wood and seedy carpeting, with a damp smell that would soon become unnoticed.  The locals were a little less forthcoming, except for the barman who was a very friendly, chatty type (as was, to be honest, just about every single person we met).  While we had a few drinks the stereotypical weather arrived: it hammered down in buckets as if the monsoon season had begun.  The barman kindly booked us a taxi and as we were leaving we received, and gave, a few good wishes on the result.  ‘What,’ cried one fella, ‘is there a match on this weekend?’

It had been a long day full of new impressions and, once we got back, we readily turned in for the night.

Friday 20th January

In the hotel restaurant for breakfast we were served by an old dear who couldn’t help reminding us of Mrs Doyle.  She asked us whether we wanted tea or coffee and a couple of minutes later came back saying ‘it was tea you wanted, so?’  At least she didn’t say ‘go on, ye will…’

There was a full spread of cholesterol-heavy food: thick bacon, sausages, eggs and both black and white pudding.  The fried eggs ran out and Mrs Doyle bustled in, asking whether we wanted any more.  Jill and Pete said yes, so she bustled out again, popping back to let us know our eggs would be ‘ready now in a moment.’  She returned with four eggs and, despite protestations that one each would be sufficient, dumped the lot on Jill and Pete’s plates.  Coming fresh from the frying pan they were super-heated, causing Jill to burn her mouth and come up with the unpleasant and off-putting phrase ‘monkey eggs’ (due to going ‘oo-oo-ah-ah’ on eating them).

Mrs Doyle was also helpful in her own way with buses.  We asked if she knew what time they went and she scampered off to reception to fetch a timetable.  It was around 10:30 and she said the buses passed by at ten to the hour, and that the next one would be at ten to twelve.  We had a think about this, thanked her for her help, and went out to get the ten to eleven bus.  This didn’t prove an easy exercise.  Although there was a stop directly over the far side of the road from the hotel, the road was a busy dual carriageway with crash barriers and a hedge running down the central reservation.  There was no obvious route across so we waited for a gap in the traffic and dashed halfway, stepping over the barriers and finding a hole in the hedge before making a second dash.  The stop was just a post in the verge, topped with a Bus Eireann sign and a blank timetable board.  We found some firm footing in the soggy grass and watched the cars hurtle past.  At almost eleven o’clock, just as I’d said we had better pack it in, the bus miraculously arrived, charged us about a pound each, and whipped us off to town.

It was a fine day, if a little chilly in the wind, and an excellent one for having a wander round the town.  We strolled down a few streets at random; they were much like any modern city, with a lot of shops in common with England.  Taking to the back streets we passed an Italianate church (St Michael’s) and found ourselves at the Milk Market – a square of old buildings housing second-hand book and clothing shops and the like.  By the side of it was a pub called The Office, a name we recognised.  Back in October when Munster had come to Edgeley Park, we had met a fella in the Royal Oak who claimed to be the landlord of The Office and he had invited us to visit him if we made it to Limerick.  Unfortunately it was closed at the time but we noted it for later.

That morning RTE and Sky had been due to do some filming at the rugby store in the centre.  We knew we would be late for it but decided to wander down there anyway to see if anyone was about.  The gang were still there when we arrived, resplendent in blue and white jester’s hats, feather boas and dyed hair.  Filming, luckily, was over so we popped in the shop for a look around.  There was some nice gear – though it was disturbing to find Newcastle Falcons jerseys on sale – but in the end we didn’t actually buy anything on that visit (I would get a t-shirt later as a memento of our visit).

We turned back towards the centre of town and stopped for a coffee in the Old Quarter (or possibly it was only the café that was called the Old Quarter).  They had tables on a terrace which was dotted with powerful heaters, clearly being their way of dealing with the smoking ban.  After that pause we continued to backtrack and stopped again at the Milk Market where Pete picked up an Air Force overcoat for a massive €9.  He had to check carefully that it had the correct price label on it.  The chap in the shop praised the quality of army tailoring and suggested that such a coat new would cost over £100 but gave no indication why he was selling it so cheaply.

Our first drink of the day came just around the corner at Nancy Blake’s, which was located in pretty much the least dodgy-looking street you could imagine.  When our eyes had adjusted to the dim light inside, we discovered a beautiful traditional pub with sawdust on the floor, torn William Morris paper on the walls and an open fire blazing away in the back room.  We were wearing a certain amount of Sale gear and so the staff and the clientele chatted away about the game with us, naturally enough making jokey comments about getting hold of tickets.  Jill opted to try a half of Guinness which at first she sipped and then gulped, trying to find a way to dispose of it in the most palatable way.  It looked like she was being forced to take medicine and it would be the only time she tried it.

A long wander around O’Connell Street finally took us to the Riddler pub, one on my list of venues to try.  I think perhaps the guide was slightly out of date because the place wasn’t very good at all.  It was cold and shabby, heavy metal was blasting out over the jukebox and the only drinkers were pinned to the bar clutching their pints like life-rafts.  We got through our drinks unmolested then Jill asked the barmaid where the nearest taxi rank was.  Instead of directing us, she phoned a cab and, after a few minutes, we decided to wait outside amongst the exiled smokers who congregate around the entrances to most of the pubs and bars.  It was school tipping out time and masses of girls in shapeless, ankle-length skirts and lads in badged blazers passed us by.  One of the lads called out ‘Munster’ll slaughter ye,’ and we grinned in response.  After ten minutes, Jill got the barmaid to find out where the taxi was.  After 20 we decided to give up and find a rank.

There were no taxis in sight at either of the ranks we tried and so, tired, cold and not a little exasperated, I suggested we go to the Tourist Information to find out where the buses went from (Mrs Doyle had only said ‘outside Dunne’s store’, except there seemed to be about 50 Dunne’s stores).  As we approached the TIC, we saw a fully populated and idle taxi rank, and rather than going in the Centre, we took the obvious option and jumped in a taxi instead.

Back at the hotel we chilled out for a couple of hours before meeting up again at Thady O’Neill’s.  There was a do on for the Sale supporters at the Pier One bar, but it seemed like a good idea to get some food first, having not eaten since breakfast.  In the pseudo-railway carriage section of the pub we ate hugely on lamb shanks (me and Jill) and a burger (Pete), all washed down with Guinness, a drink for all occasions.

By the time we got to the Pier One there was quite a crowd in, mainly hogging the seats to watch the Leicester v Clermont-Auvergne game.  Not long after our arrival one of the hotel staff came up to hand over a wodge of ‘beer tokens’ for the Sale supporters to have a drink on the house.  It turned out these really were beer tokens and couldn’t be exchanged for anything exotic like wine, gin, or quadruple whiskeys.  A hot buffet also appeared and very quickly disappeared too.  More people arrived and the odd chant of ‘Say-ul’ could be heard across the bar.  Some Munster fans hung around the fringes, one bearing a sign asking for spare tickets.  In the toilets I heard a southerner saying they had booked their flights and hotel but hadn’t been able to get tickets; in the end they had said ‘fack it’ and had come anyway.  A second round of beer tokens came our way and went the way of all beer tokens, but when the bar staff tried to diddle Jill over a cashback transaction, we decided we had seen enough.

Riggers had recommended, according to Jill, a place called Nancy O’Grady’s down on Patrick Street.  No such place seemed to exist and a lot of the bars down that way seemed to be a little on the trendy and loud side.  Sticking with what we knew (or almost knew) we walked towards the Milk Market and found The Office open.  It was very brightly lit, fairly quiet, and had just a few local drinkers in.  At the bar I eyed up a short, tubby, moustachioed chap who I recognised as the landlord we’d met in Stockport.  We sat down to see if he would approach us.  After the hectic scrum in the Pier One, it was nice to find somewhere a little more relaxed and we felt able to unwind a bit and have a good old natter.  As we did, the landlord finally came across the bar and started up with the usual ‘are ye going to win?’ gambit.  We didn’t get much of a chance of reminiscing about the Oak before he said he had to be going.  A few of the other people joined in the chat, reminding us what happened to Gloucester (‘ah,’ I said, ‘they only had Henry Paul, we’ve got Jason Robinson’).

The evening was rapidly coming to a close and at midnight we bundled out into the street to find the area transformed by the sudden blossoming of a number of trendy nightclubs.  This had two advantages: there were lots of semi-clad young ladies wandering around, and there were lots of taxis.  In a moment we were back at the hotel and crashing out.

Saturday 21st January

Match day.  The breakfast room was full and buzzing, the excitement palpable.  Jill had got a paper and it was full of articles talking about how intimidating Thomond Park was and how it is built on a strong community spirit, how the atmosphere is like nothing else and can only be understood by being present there.

Waiting for a taxi in the reception pyramid, the television showed pictures of a stranded bottle-nosed whale, who became known as Billy, causing a sensation in the Thames in London.  We were surrounded by Sale fans making their final preparations: tying scarves, affixing novelty hats, inflating sharks.  As if in some kind of reaction to the tension, I started to feel sleepy.  Perhaps my body thought I should shut down for a while.  An alternative course of action was to tranquilize myself with Mr Arthur Guinness’s Patent Stress Reducing Porter, a course which I and many others did indeed follow.

We shared a minibus into town, paying €10 for each of our two ‘groups’.  A nice little earner for match day.  Jill, to our bewilderment, tipped the shyster too.  Whatever the deviousness of his financial methods, he had dropped us nicely outside the front door of Clohessy’s, just as directed.  At first the place looked a little rum, the open doors revealing a packed room populated entirely with red jerseys.  However it turned out to be less bad than that.  Some speakers, including the Claw himself, were on stage entertaining the crowd, so the Munster fans had crowded up to that end to listen.  Towards the back of the room we found a small cluster of Sale fans and threw ourselves into their midst.

After a little while, many of them were going to move on and we decided to move on as well, hoping to find somewhere a little more old-fashioned somewhere in the direction of the ground.  Having been our favourite find so far, we naturally turned our heels towards Nancy Blake’s.  The pub was somewhat busier than on our earlier visit but it was still fairly clear of obvious rugby fans.  ‘Obvious’ though doesn’t stop everyone in the place having an opinion and from asking us ours.  We sat by the peat fire while everyone wished us good luck and asked the usual question: ‘will ye win?’ which we answered as best we could.  The fire started to get a bit warm so we shifted across the room and ended up talking to a hippy bloke who supported Leinster and a couple of old dears who were Munster through and through.  One lived in Cardiff and claimed to go drinking in Charlotte Church’s local – though she didn’t see whether she had seen either her or Gav.  The other wore an arguably unsuitable ripped top that belonged to her daughter: she had picked it up just because it was red.  They had no tickets but had made the journey just to share, and contribute of course, to the atmosphere, as did most people in the pub.  A bloke at the bar, referring to the news story from London, said ‘there’s a whale in the Thames, and lots of sharks in the Shannon!’, which was a welcome of sorts.

The company was so congenial and the place so welcoming that we stayed a good while there before thinking that we ought to get nearer the ground.  We skipped a few pubs on the way and crossed over Thomond Bridge, facing various comments as we went, like the bloke who claimed they’d been removing all Estate Agents’ ‘For Sale’ signs.  The first pub we found over the bridge was JJ Bowles’s, which was right next to a house bearing a ‘For Sale’ sign.  The pub was packed out with red as usual and the queue for the bar was a gamut of rugby banter.  Once we had got our drinks, we scorned the outside terrace looking over the river (a smoker’s zone, of course), where Elvis, complete with big quiff and golden cape was enjoying a pint, and fought our way into the back room.  Munster fans were everywhere again and a woman called out with a big grin ‘ye’re chancing yer arms here are ye?’  We sat with some of the lads (a term, in Limerick, that refers to both men and women – the three of us were always to referred to as ‘lads’) and had a good chat about the prospects for the game before downing our pints and heading up the road again.

By this time the streets were almost solid with the hordes moving towards the ground, and most of them were wearing red.  We stopped for pies part of the way there and gobbled them down as we finally approached the focus of all this excitement.  We lost Jill in the crowd for a moment and stood looking for her on the churned up turf outside the turnstiles.  The light was fading and a fog seemed to be on its way, shading into a haze the ranks of council houses surrounding the ground.  Jill found us again quickly and we pushed our way inside.

Entering a new ground is always disorientating and we paused for a moment on a small tarmac area between the ends of two stands, giving us a glimpse at the throngs on the terraces.  As we paused, we saw our gruff, generous friend from the other night.  He held a large plastic bag that, on enquiry, revealed itself to contain the gigantic Munster jersey that had been hanging from one of the buildings in town.  It folded up surprisingly small.

We walked behind the east stand, between the concrete walls of the terrace and the perimeter, up to the north terrace.  As usual in a new ground – I did the same my first time in Twickenham – I looked up at the terraces first, looking for my place, rather than staring out into the ground.  Halfway along we spotted Gallon and Gillop waving at us, so we heaved ourselves up the concrete steps to join them, finding a welcome amount of standing room.  Finally I turned round to look at the ground.  Both teams were warming up in the glare of the spotlights and the stands were a mass of red flags, like a North Korean rally.  We had a few Sale fans round us and could see a couple more groups over in the east stand.  An opera singer to our right was entertaining the biggest stand but was frequently drowned out by the crowd who cheered almost anything the Munster players did.  The Sale players jogged around the boundary of their half of the pitch – the side farthest from us – to a volley of noise that could have been from either sets of fans, approbation and opprobrium sounding similar when shouted by thousands of voices.  We found ourselves covered by the big red jersey while the opera singer launched into Stand Up And Fight and the first of a million renditions of Fields of Athenry.  Pete grabbed some Guinness from the bar and I nipped to the toilet, in the space of which time the terraces crammed shoulder to shoulder.

The Sale team ran out to a roar and took position in front of the posts at our end.  Full-back Larrachea yawned and, when the Munster team ran out to a frenzy of flag waving and yelling, bent with his back to the field to adjust his laces.  It was a small act of defiance with about as much effect as a French peashooter at Crécy.

Within minutes of the kick-off there was a fight between Sheridan and Stringer (an arsey little get, I always thought) which led to Lobbe getting sent off for running over and joining in.  It was all downhill from there.  Sale looked unprepared and like headlight-stunned rabbits as the red tide swamped them, pushing the forwards back from rucks, flooding through the defence like water through gravel.  Tellingly, Chabal caught a restart and was driven back ten or more metres.  O’Gara’s kicking was pin-point accurate whereas ours was wayward and unfocussed.  The Sale lineout fell to pieces and inevitably the first try came from a Munster catch-and-drive.  We roared out our traditional chant of ‘Say-ul’ and received Athenry in return.  During the place kicks we respected the local custom of keeping utterly silent and it was an eerie experience.  Darkness fell and peat smoke or fog drifted across the ground, as substantial as our hopes and, like them, being blown quite away.

The continued clumsiness of Sale and the rampant attack of Munster made me start to feel a little resentment towards the Irish fans and their loudly expressed joy.  If only we had put up a fight I could have accepted the orthodoxy of the invincibility of Thomond Park, but the team, the place, the reputation was hardly being tested by Sale’s amateurish display and an unearned reputation is difficult to accept.  Perhaps they would argue that the reputation, and all that follows from it, was precisely what was making Sale look so second rate.

At half time a Munster fan took out her hipflask of ‘hot brandy gone cold’, which was flavoured with cloves, and another of plain brandy and invited us to take a nip.  We and a few others gratefully took up her kind offer and at once my resentment seemed to retreat.  It was only a game after all and what really had we expected of the away fixture in Limerick, I reflected sanguinely.  The result would be what it was.

The second half was somewhat better from a Sale point of view.  The directionless energy of the first half gathered itself into a long period of sustained pressure.  Nonetheless we couldn’t score for all the territory and possession we won.  Towards the end of the game I muttered that even if we couldn’t score, we could at least deny them the bonus point.  At this point the play moved inexorably up to the Sale line and the Munstermen popped over for their fourth try.  The crowd went ballistic and our heads went down.  The ten billionth chorus of Athenry rang out and I reflected that, lovely and moving a song as it was, one could get heartily sick of it.

We wished for the end to come quickly and left the ground as soon as it did.  Among the Sale fans in the masses filling the road into town we discussed our huge disappointment and the failures of the team.  The crowd dispersed and we made our way to the Locke Inn by the river, supposedly the oldest pub in Limerick, though you wouldn’t know it from the inside.  It was heaving with delighted Munster fans and, short of words, we huddled together to cure our ills with drink.  It is impossible, however, to avoid getting into conversation with an Irishman and we found ourselves chatting with a bloke claiming to be Keith Wood’s cousin.

Saying goodbye and wishing our best regards to the big man, we headed up O’Connell Street to find some food.  It took a while as most places were packed out.  Eventually an efficient maîtresse d’ got us a table in Luigi Malone’s.  Spurning oddities such as the kebabs dangling from portable gallows, we settled on pizzas, which turned out to be both gigantic and delicious.  The place slowly filled with red shirted types who were generous with their sympathy towards us.  Unfortunately the restaurant didn’t serve Guinness so we had to move on.

After a bit of a wander and a discussion about whether we wanted to go to Dolan’s, which was somewhat out of town, we turned around and made our way to Martin’s, just off O’Connell Street.  Red jerseys again.  Jill found a seat surrounded by a set of young lads who we chatted to knowledgably and sympathetically about the Thomond Park experience and the generally agreed view that Chabal had gone missing once he found he wasn’t going to get his way.  The lads were in various stages of inebriation and one of them hugged me each time he passed on the way to either the toilet or the bar.  Bless him.

At the bar some old fella told me how he remembered Thomond 35 years ago, before there were any stands.  ‘There’s cinders under that ground,’ he said, meaningfully.  Somehow he did convey the sense of history, how the place is built on the blood and sweat of generations of players and spectators, how the club has grown from the rubble of a poor neighbourhood to become a powerful and fearsome force.  ‘We had blood on our knees,’ he said cryptically.

In the back room ‘Welsh Dave’, wearing a Munster jacket, stopped me for a chat, telling me how much of an admirer of Sale he was, but how poorly he thought they had performed.  A general opinion was that Sale were the strongest team to have visited Limerick for a long time.  Strong or not they had just played patsies to the Thomond Park legend.

We were finally collared by an old bloke in a Ferrari jacket with whom Jill swapped baseball caps.  He also gave her his Jameson’s hipflask, which was nice.  He told us his name was Con, or Con Air, as he was a frequent organiser of away trips, and he led us away to another bar, Squire Maguire’s, where excitement and drinking would go on into the night.  It was very busy but we weren’t alone as a few more Sale fans, who we didn’t know, came in later.  Con introduced his friendly, jolly brother whose idea of personal space wasn’t the same as mine, and who cheerily rested his somewhat generous man-breasts on top of my drinking arm.  He seemed such a nice bloke I felt it would have been churlish to protest.

In the back the other set of Sale fans joined up with some Munstermen for a sing-song.  The choices were a little quirky: Kissing in the Back Row of the Movies (some kind of Chabal reference?) and Sloop John B (‘feel so broke up, I wanna go home’…quite).  I went to the toilet and while I waited for my turn, a skinny young man came in, vomited copiously but unfussily into the sink, received a few ‘y’arights’ then left.  I felt it was time to leave and Jill did too.  Chivvying Pete to finish his pint, returning some drinks and extricating ourselves as politely as possible, we stepped out for a taxi which we shared back with an Irish girl who lived near the hotel, though I’m not sure if we paid twice for each ‘group’ again.

It was 1:30am and no one was going to carry on drinking or talking.  At one point in the evening a kind of sympathy fatigue had overtaken me and I didn’t want anyone else saying ‘bad luck’ when everyone must have seen the same dismal performance I did.  Any number of times I was asked ‘Great game, wasn’t it?’ and I wanted to scream back ‘No!  It was bloody awful!’

Sunday 22nd January

The breakfast room was full again but it was a more subdued crowd, nursing their hangovers and their disappointments.  CheadleEnder tried to speak but had lost her voice a long time back.  Pink Lady said she had had a great time at the after-match party at Dolan’s – and had even secured a seat throughout the evening.  Most people’s assessment of the game seemed to tally: Sale had woefully underperformed.

None of our party had a great deal of energy and the thought of dragging ourselves over to Limerick just to sit around quietly drinking coffee, or of finding our way out to ‘Dorty’ Nellie’s in Bunratty, didn’t have that much appeal.  Instead we grabbed books, newspapers, laptops and pencils, and camped out on the big sofas in reception while our rooms were being cleaned.  The pyramid was full of supporters of both teams, and both sets were on the quiet side.  People slowly drifted out, some checking out, some heading into town, the adventurous ones on a tour of the countryside.  The bright cold day shone through the windows and the skylight at the tip of the pyramid, and gradually we were left almost alone, more or less in silence.  Pete watched a film, Jill dozed and read, I forced myself to look through the match reports.  They didn’t make pretty reading and the paper that Jill had thought would make an excellent souvenir of a famous victory instead was the sermon at a wake.  Even Billy, the Thames whale, had died, the efforts to return him to the open sea having failed.  Sharks and whales had had a bad weekend.  Still, at least the paper had a free Dubliners CD.  Woo.

That afternoon would be the final games of the HEC pool stages and one in particular, Bath v Leinster, was of some interest.  We asked at reception about the chances of watching it somewhere and were told that the bar in the hotel would be showing it on the big screen and would be opening up at 2pm.  This fixed our plans for the day and we spent the time until then in our sedentary occupations.

Shortly after two we checked the bar to find it dark and the doors closed.  We were told that the barman hadn’t turned up yet, which, this being Ireland, we weren’t surprised at.  To kill the time until he did show up, we crossed the forecourt to Thady O’Neill’s where we could at least get a drink.  A couple of fellas in the bar sympathised with us, as was customary, but we soon disappeared back to the hotel where we found the bar, deserted by all but the young barman, open and lit up with the sight of the Recreation Ground.  While the build-up continued and we gathered our drinks, we chatted with the young lad about the prospects and the permutations for the quarter finals.  The exact draw would depend on the outcome of this match.  It was an exciting do with Leinster seeming to follow Munster’s lead in playing with creativity and flair in the backs to put an English side to the sword.  The result meant we would have a trip to Biarritz for our next round.

Following the rugby they switched to footie so, leaving the now slightly more populated bar, we took ourselves the few yards back to Thady’s and tucked into some more beer and also some tasty snacks.  As we sat quietly talking, various other Sale groups strolled in, some looking a little, um, tired and emotional.  Pink Lady rather cheekily assessed our day by saying ‘you know there’s a nice little town 15 minutes drive away, don’t you?’  CheadleEnder stopped for a moment to enthuse about the success of the weekend, bar one 80 minute period in the middle.  Nailing it precisely she said ‘If people arrived on Saturday and only saw that shite, they’d wonder why they’d bothered.’  Although invited to join them, we kept our quiet selves to ourselves and drifted out for a relatively early night, once Jill had forced down the last of her gin.

Monday 23rd January

The morning routine was fairly fixed by now, though I was the last of us to arrive for breakfast.  While we were eating Jill phoned our friendly taxi man.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’ll be the Sale fans who were supposed to win this weekend.’

‘And you’ll be the cheeky Munster fan who promised us a lift,’ she retorted.

The taxi was early, making me hurry through checking out before tumbling out into the cold, grey day, which was the worst of our stay.  Along the journey Jill chatted to the driver – who wasn’t the same as our first chap – about golf courses.  It turned out there was one at the airport and it appeared to be directly under the flight path.  How you shout ‘fore’ loudly enough for the passing planes to hear is anyone’s guess.  I stared out of the window bidding farewell to the country.  Just past a road safety sign were some huge, teepee-shaped stooks of corn which could have been the result of harvesting – though surely out of season, and why so near the road? – or could have been an unusual, unindicated public artwork.  Angel of the North, B of the Bang, Stook of the Shannon.

In the airport a long queue of weary Sale fans snaked away from check-in.  Gallon and Gillop told of their exploits and losses at Cork races, and a few last introductions were made, just in time to say goodbye.  We passed through the overpriced not-duty-free shop and waited for our call watching the hundreds of American soldiers and airmen wandering around the bar in their sand-coloured fatigues.  A few of them bought pints of Guinness and smiled cheesily while their comrades took their photographs.  Over the far side of the room a sign announced ‘US Passport Control and Border Protection’.  American imperialism is getting worse and worse with their borders reaching right across the Atlantic.

Back in Liverpool the final farewells were made at baggage reclaim.  Phone numbers were exchanged, as were hugs and kisses and promises to see each other at the next game – or Biarritz.  They may have been mugged at Thomond Park but Sale were still having their best ever season in the HEC.  And, for our part, it had been a wonderful, incomparable weekend.  The friendliness and warmth of the welcome we were given was like nothing else; sinking into a sublimely rugby-orientated atmosphere, where everyone was ready and willing to talk about the game, overwhelmed any disappointment we felt about the actual result, and it was hard to believe we came away from Limerick anything other than winners.