Not easy translating the frog word as water boy
I heard the funniest joke on Monday…Donncha O’Callaghan was going to be captain of the British and Irish Lions. Ha! Ha!
Turned out this wasn’t a joke after all. No, fair play to him. Donncha is the ultimate when it comes to professionalism and a great player but is also great fun to be around when off the rugby pitch. I was delighted for him.
We are now in test week and the excitement is really starting to kick in. For players there will always be excitement before a test match but unlike the thousands of supporters starting to arrive we are here to do a job. Therefore the concentration, intensity and homework we do before the match will be more than for any other game.
Everyone will start to get more serious as the pressure starts to build but there is always time for letting our hair down and having a bit of craic too. Throughout the tour we have had lots of different groups who make my job easier on the entertainment committee. For instance we have James Hook to find out where the local sun beds are, Keith Curls our now youngest member has to take care of Lenny the Lion, Luke Fitzgerald and Euan Murray are on the daily joke committee. Poor Luke having to follow Euan ‘Woodeye’ as he’s had the bus in stitches almost daily. Another is the music committee who must produce a new CD for every bus journey.
On the way back from training yesterday, the song “Sunchyme” by Safri Duo came on. The whole bus erupted, guys up dancing, clapping and banging the side of the bus as the music kicked in. We arrived at the hotel mid-song so ended up doing an extra lap of the hotel and got some worker from the side of the road onto the bus to do a dance for us. It may have been a “you kind of needed to be there” moment but it made my day!
In probably our most physical game so far, the Kings really put up a tough fight tonight (Tuesday). Their head coach, Alan Solomons was my first ever coach at Ulster. He is a man I respect a lot and gave me my chance in Ulster. Robbie Kempson the forwards coach of the Kings, was a tough, tough guy I played with in my first year. With those guys at the helm there was no way the game was going to be anything other than physical. Our guys were able to grind out a tough victory - with a major positive being our scrum.
My job as water boy for the day may look easy but it’s tougher than it looks. Some of the supporters enjoyed shouting some abuse at me but it was all very funny. I will definitely know from now on - coming from a back - passing a message to the front five is a waste of time, even if it’s from the coaches. I will repeat the reply I was to go back to the coaches with and to keep it rated PG I will replace the most common word they used with ‘Frog’.
“Frog off, we know what we Frogging need to do, you Frogging back!”
Lesson learnt!
PS. I have no idea why I used frog, just first word that came to mind.
9:15 am
Frog Man,
Best of luck for the first test. Looks like you are a starter and well deserved…
Give them hell on the pitch!
K
Comment by Dirishrover