There may have been exuses used like our injury crisis, or the lack of an effective pre-season friendly programme leading us to a sluggish start, but the team still did us proud. We may have 5 losses, but we picked up 3 losing bonus points in those defeats, and even managed to pick up two try bonus points. One against Ulster when we beat them, and one against Toulouse in a game we could well have won.

And so to yesterday's game - the planning started many weeks ago as a Rugby fan of mine who currently resides in the Czech Republic wanted to go along to an Irish match whilst he was over here next, marvellous I thought - great excuse to go to Llanelli if I ever heard one! Little did I realise how tricky that would end up being in the end! My car's first MOT was due the Thursday before the match and I've been having a few issues with the blighter, many thanks to MG going bust 3 months after I buy one of your cars, great work there lads...! Additionally, the winds on the Thursday meant a cancellation of the flight from my Czech friend and suddenly getting to Sunday's game is looking a little tenuous!

Luckily by Saturday my car has passed it's MOT and flights re-arranged from Romania mean we're on - so we celebrate with a few drinks on Saturday night...! Up at 9am for a "fresh" start, and we're on the road. I'd love to write enough here to bore you for the 3 1/2 hours it took to get there just so you know how it felt! The Welsh are obsessed with their speed cameras, the M4 is littered for them once you've paid the ludicrous charge to enter the "country".

Stradey Park is well sign-posted once you leave the M4, and the parking is only £3, bargain! There didn't appear to be many Irish fans at the game, I could count all of the ones I saw on both hands, but every one of you gave me a nod, which is nice as I had no idea who you were, but it was much appreciated! Bought a pint of Heineken for £2.30 and found myself somewhere to stand on the North concorse, just over the 22.

No, that wasn't a typo - I bought a pint of Heineken in the Rugby ground for £2.30.

Just before the game kicked off, the announcer tried to jeer up the support "Lets have a cheer from the Irish fans!". Me and my mate cheered, and one guy over by the 10m line...!

Now I'm not going to dwell too much on the game, we all know the result and the game was a dead rubber. The French referee blew his whistle and we were off, Stephen Jones launched a high kick into the wind, the chasers managed to get to the ball in time and recover it back their side. Llanelli threw the ball right to left to right to left to right, but couldn't find a way through. Eventually we were pinged for off-side and they took the kicking option right in front of the posts.

Irish kick off and we're in their half, unfortunately from my vantage point - I couldn't really see much of that end :-p a couple of phases end in Barry slotting the penalty between the uprights, we appear to have a game on our hands!

After a few minutes of play, David Paice is pinged for an offence, I couldn't quite see what it was as whilst the referee was indicated Paice back-chatted, and subsequently we were walked 10m up the pitch. Llanelli take a scrum and creep towards our line, but eventually knock on and it's scrum to Irish 10m from our line. Unfortunately Llanelli push Irish off the ball from our own feed and Popham feeds the ball to the excellent Peel who dives for the line with desparate defence not realising the ball has come out the wrong side..!

After a few more minutes of up and down the pitch, we launch an attack into their 22, the ball unfortunately is eventually turned over and thumped downfield with their winger chasing fast. Mickey Horak is quick to react and launches a thumping tackle pushing both players plus ball into touch. Unfortunately, I didn't see what happened as my neck doesn't bend left far enough, but he's down for a number of minutes and walks past in front of me holding an ice pack on his stomach - game over for Horak. It's at this point I notice the pint of Heineken I bought for £2.30 now appears to be empty...

Geraghty comes on as a replacement pushing Flutey to full-back. We have a scrum somewhere up the pitch I can't see, our backs are lined up well and I see we have numbers if we can spread the ball - Geraghty sees this too and launches a huge Catt-like pass, which is plucked from mid-air by David James, the record Heineken Cup try scorer, who adds another to the record...

The remainder of the half is rather stagnant, but we manage to get a penalty kick to leave the half time score of 17-6. I'm a bit miffed I'm driving at this point as a pint of Heineken is £2.30.

The second half was almost entirely played in front of me, Irish put a great deal of pressure and remain with the ball and territory for most of the half. Geraghty by now is playing at 10 with what looks like Mordt playing at 12, but I couldn't really tell as the announcer had long given up trying to work out who was replacing who - and the Irish team in the match programme was nothing like the players on the pitch, mainly because all the players on the bench started the game, still it was only £2.50! The last of a number of scrums on the Llanelli 5m line is fed to Geraghty after the forwards had been pounding the line for the past 5 minutes, Geraghty does a quick side-step and he's in - made it look easy, now why didn't the big boys give him the ball earlier..?!!?

We're now very much in this game, unfortunately we get pinged twice more for back-chatting to the ref when he blows for a decision we didn't like, which was getting frustrating to watch. After a long while we get a relatively straight forward penalty. I was hoping for a catch and drive as Kennedy is on the pitch now and he's already pinched a couple of Llanelli line-outs, after all, we're not going to get through and could do with the try scoring practice. But the points are taken, and we're now 1 point behind, watching the two men in the ancient scoring system physically remove the numbers to replace them with new ones was good to see, it'll be a shame to lose this ground as it's a truly proper Rugby ground. I could really do with a pint, but alas I'm driving...

Llanelli decide to start playing the game, and Irish are eventually pinged (again) for off-side (again) - which is fair enough really, we were off-side..! It's on the half way line and with the wind behind him Jones decides to kick for the points, no problem I think to myself, I've seen him kicking for Wales and his range isn't particularly good... I got that wrong as he had distance to spare leaving us now 4 points behind, with not long to go.

After the kick off Llanelli recover the ball and start throwing some wonderful phases together with excellent off-loads in the tackle. Steffon Armitage appears to be playing at center by now, which turns out to be handy as he's right there at a Mapusua tackle and the ball is recycled to Irish, our backs line up quickly and the ball is fed to Ojo who out accelerates their back-peddling winger. The full-back makes good ground to cover as he was out of position due to them being in attack before the turn-over. Ojo now has two players showing interest and absolutely no support, in true Delon fashion he kicks ahead, unfortunately the full-back has positioned his body correctly and he's denied a try-scoring opportunity.

And that was game over I'm afraid, we had a couple of other opportunities where Murphy knocked on grounding the ball over the try line under immense pressure from the defence, there were also fantastic breaks from Flutey, Mapusua and Barry (I didn't know Barry did that!), unfortunately on every break from an Irish player he found there was no one with him to pass or off-load to, it was a miracle that only one of these breaks ended in a turn-over as there was literally no one there...!

So that it's for the Heineken Cup this year, we had a good few games, and had the joint best bonus points in the competition, lets hope we'll be here next year as I believe with the experience added to the boys from this season, we can come back with all guns blazing next year - who knows what can happen!

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