Turned out to be a horribly accurate prophecy.

But this trip was to be far more than “80 minutes of rugby”.  Early Friday morning, we descended upon an unsuspecting London City Airport to catch the club’s specially chartered flight direct to a difficult part of France to get to.  Hundreds more were flying via Barcelona or Toulouse – this second option giving fans a chance to catch the Tiggers game on the Sunday. 

At this time of the year, Perpignan airport has only a handful of flights from Paris each day.  When we landed, we doubled the number of aircraft there, and they welcomed us through domestic arrivals to avoid having to open immigration or passport control. 

The squad boarded their waiting coach, and the flight crew their taxi.  That left about 30 of us looking for non-existent taxis and buses.  No matter, spirits were high and taxis were soon ordered and ferrying us the short journey to our hotels.

The game, on the other hand, wasn’t.  This is my first match report where I followed Griff’s advice and tried to use the voice recorder on my phone.  Anyone want a recording of distorted French announcements and a baying crowd? ;)

The lack of a mascot (I must admit I was hoping for a Bayonne-esque Prancing Pony) was replaced by a couple of people cycling around the pitch, followed by a minute’s silence.

The Exiles kicked off (from right to left, why do commentators always say that?)  <Nom screams “Come on Irish”> into the USAP 22m <Nom screams again>.  Hmmm, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea…

A typical kicking game ensued.  Conditions are not good – the glorious sunshine had given way to rain as we walked to the Stade Aimee Giral, but in turn was replaced by snow just prior to kick-off.  It’s wet, cold and nothing much is happening on the pitch.  Kick to touch, lineout.  Kick, missed touch.  Return kick finds touch.  You get the idea, we’ve all seen games like that.

After about nine minutes of this, Irish were caught offside, resulting in an easy 3 point kick for our hosts.   USAP tried some chip and chases, breaking our line a few times, fortunately the Irish defence were just about quick enough.  We seemed to be a little short of ideas until finally the scores were levelled on the half hour.

Then “That Incident” occurred.  From our position it was impossible to see – in fact the extent of Roche’s injury wasn’t realised until Sunday.  I’ll just quote my recording here : “Lots of booing, we must have been awarded something.  One of our players is on the deck.  Looks like number 6 or 8.  Ref chatting to TJ.  Penalty to us.  No card, so can’t have been that bad.  Roche off, he’s going straight to the tunnel”.

I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt to the extremely friendly locals – and that they did see exactly what happened and that’s why they were booing!

To be fair to the home team, the scoreboard flattered us at 3-all when the players went in for their half time cuppa, both teams squandered try scoring opportunities in the last few minutes, but we seemed to be missing something.

Second Half

USAP were able to gather their kick-off and get right up to the Irish try line.  The defence leapt into action once again, but a penalty was needlessly given away.  Rosalen was on form, making it 6-3. 

Did I mention that we had posh padded seats?  And very nice they were too.  It was also Delon’s birthday, so the referee had got a card especially for him.  A yellow one for a stupid high tackle on their 11 – Delon knew it was coming and started the walk of shame before it was shown.  The penalty kick went wide of the posts, and this seemed to give Irish a kick up the backside.  For a while at least.

A short period of Irish attack meant we got a rare visit to the other half of the pitch.  Perpignan were pinged for holding on just outside their 10m line, and the traditional French jeering for the kicker was silenced with Hewat’s second score, 6-all.  Unfortunately, that was to be our last score, with half an hour left.

A penalty to USAP hit the upright, and Irish were caught napping.  They recovered the ball, and dotted it down under the sticks.  13-6 after the conversion, with 26 minutes to go.

Another Irish attack ended with an intercept, the Irish quickly switching to defence.  Poor handling from both sides wasn’t really much of a surprise in those conditions.  Richards made another fine break, but a crunching tackle stopped him in the tracks, but didn’t stop the ball flying forward out of his hands.  USAP were putting in good high kicks and managed to get some field position, aided by their forwards getting some momentum together.  A collapsed maul resulted in another penalty, and goodbye to the losing bonus point.  The score stood at 16-6, with only a few minutes to go. 

Irish were down, but not out.  They set up an attack, with a cross-field kick – one of the better attacks of the day.  It was knocked on.  The frustration for the Irish players was very evident - Paul Hodgson had only recently come on and was urging everyone to keep it together. 

Another attack from Irish resulted in us winning a penalty, which was quickly taken, but we just couldn’t get past the home team.  Their pack was pushing us all over the place, their backs were kicking them high and winning the aerial battle.  Maybe taking a kick and settling for a losing bonus would have been a better call, but the players must have felt that they could edge it still.  Wrong.

A final converted try for the sangue et or, and the final result was 23-6.  We had chances, they made chances, and they made chances.  A fair result, but the match will be remembered and talked about for all the wrong reasons.

With two more matches to play, surely Irish and Perpignan are through to the quarter finals.  And we are still top of the table, albeit by a single bonus point, with both the best “for” and “against” scores in our group. 

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