‘Goys from Belvo, Gonzaga and Blackrock are mixing like there’s no difference between them’

So I’m sitting at the deportures gate and I’m as giddy as pint number seven. We all are? We’re waiting for our flight to board and the atmosphere is absolutely electric.

There’s, like, goys from Michael’s, Belvedere, Gonzaga and Blackrock all mixing with each other like there’s no actual difference between them. Which there isn’t really. I despise them all equally. But not as much today. Because today it feels like we’re all on the same side, a bunch of bald – or balding – men who are off to Budapest to receive Dr Holger Esterházy’s miracle hair restoration treatment.

“Where the fock is Winker?” one of the Blackrock goys goes. “He should be here by now.”

Winker being Winker Raymond, the former Mary’s kicker who did the Sportsman Dip course with me in UCD and who put this trip together.

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One of the Gonzaga dudes is like, “Apparently, his taxi didn’t show up.”

“Bit like your lot,” one of the Blackrock goys goes, “the year we handed you your orses in the Senior Cup,” and that gets a huge laugh from, like, everyone.

Quick as a flash, I go, "Yeah, unlike that Gonzaga team, though, the taxi can only carry four passengers."

That gets an actual cheer, then three or four heads who I've never even met before tip over to offer me a high-five. Like I said, it's just a bunch of rugby dudes from very different backgrounds getting on like a house on fire – it's what I'd imagine the Law Library is like.

I decide to hit the jacks then because my tonsils are floating. As I’m walking away, I hear one of the dudes – I’m pretty sure he’s, like, Terenure – go, “Jesus, when you think about the talent that he pissed away, you could nearly cry, couldn’t you?”

It's a lovely thing to hear and I end up getting a bit teary myself as I'm walking into the jacks. I do the necessary, then as I'm washing my hands – I know, the whole Covid thing has turned me into such a hygiene freak – I notice that I have a text message from, like, Honor?

Hilarious

It's a link to this website that allows you to see what your face would look like with, like, different hairstyles? I take a picture of my face, then I stort, I don't know, uploading photos off the IRFU website into it. We're talking James Lowe. We're talking Craig Casey. We're talking Andrew Porter.

I'm suddenly cracking up laughing – it could be the drink, but the one of me with Andrew Porter's hair is genuinely, genuinely hilarious. I end up sending it to everyone in my "Six Nations Big Discussion" WhatsApp group and I end up getting a smiley face from Craig Doyle and a "Who this?" from Rob Kearney, because – yeah, no – I added him to the group without actually telling him?

But it’s only when I throw in an old photograph of me in my rugby prime – I’ve got, like, 300 or 400 of them in a file morked “Glory Days” – that I remember why I’m actually going to Budapest and why I’m paying 50,000 yoyos for Dr Holger Esterházy’s secret serum.

It’s a long time since I saw myself with a quiff – but there it is, restored to its former glory above my forehead. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever used the word “gorgeous” to describe a man, but fock it, it’s 2022, not 1992, so I’m just going to come out and say it. I look gorgeous.

My phone beeps. It's a message from Simon Zebo, saying, "Who this?" and I tip back to the boarding gate with a big smile on my face.

I’m feeling so – being honest – full of myself that I don’t notice for a good 60 seconds that the atmosphere has changed. Goys are just, like, staring into space. Or they’re pacing backwards and forwards with their phones to their ears.

I’m like, “What’s the Jack?”

And that’s when one of the Belvo dudes goes, “Winker’s focked off with all of our money.”

I'm like, "Excuse me?"

“Yeah, no, you heard me right. I just rang his gaff. He’s done a runner.”

"So what do we do? Do we still go?"

“Why would we go?”

"Er, because this Dr Esterházy dude is expecting us?"

"Ross, there is no Dr Esterházy."

“There has to be. I’ve seen his website. All those dudes who were as bald as the tyres on my son’s first Subaru Impreza – and they ended up looking like Adam literally Jones.”

“He created the site himself, Ross.”

“What? Why would he do something like that?”

“Er, to take €50,000 off – how many of us are here? Forty?”

Forty times 50,000 yoyos. You do the maths, as I said to Fionn’s boy genius brother when I paid him 200 quid to sit one of my Junior Cert exams.

Secret serum

“I honestly thought Winker had changed,” one of the Mary’s dudes goes.

Then others in the group stort throwing in bits of information that they’ve been able to find out on the phone. Someone says that Winker is up to his nuts in debt because of online poker. Someone else says that it was an actual hair transplant he got and it had fock-all to do with any secret serum. Someone else says that he was spotted yesterday in Australia.

“Jesus,” I go, “I’m storting to wonder is Budapest even a place?”

It ends up being a place because there's suddenly an announcement that the flight to Budapest is now ready for boarding.

“Hang on,” one of the Blackrock dudes goes to the Mary’s dude, “what did you mean when you said you thought he’d changed?”

The Mary’s dude goes, “It’s just that, well, he has form for this kind of thing.”

I ask the obvious question. I’m like, “In terms of?”

He’s there, “Honestly, he hasn’t done anything like this in, like, 10 years. I thought he deserved a second chance.”

One of the Gonzaga dudes shouts, “That’s a typical Mary’s thing to say,” and all of the happy feelings suddenly disappear as everyone storts trading insults with each other about the schools that we all left more than 20 years ago.

And I just sit there, staring into space, 50 grandingtons lighter, and feeling like I’m losing more and more hair by the second.