SO THIS IS IT.The day has arrived. I've updated the old Twitter to say that I never thought I'd be so happy to find myself queuing at a Ryanair check-in desk. I think everyone feels pretty much the same way, writes ROSS O'CARROLL-KELLY
I’m looking around me. See, we get a bad rap – and by we I mean, like, Leinster fans? But, despite what people say, we really do come in all shapes and sizes. There’s goys here with Aviator shades on their heads, goys with Oakleys on their heads, goys with Ray-Bans on their heads. I think Fionn sums it up best when he describes it as a real cultural melting pot.
"I've just realised," Oisinn suddenly goes, "I don't even know what it looks like – as in the actualHeineken Cup?"
JP’s there, “We know where it’s been for the past twelve months. We’ll probably know it when we smell it,” which has everyone in the entire queue laughing.
I mention the story I heard, that when Wasps won it the year after Munster, they couldn’t bring the focking thing indoors for six months for the hum of Beamish, swede mash and red diesel. I swear to God, roysh, you can’t hear the flight announcements for the sound of high-fiving.
We move a few steps forwards. I’m looking at JP, Fionn and Oisinn, these three friends of mine who’ve followed this team, through thick and thin, for pretty much three years, on and off. And there’s a real sense that it’s all been, like, leading towards this day? Even for, like, 80 minutes, we can forget about all the other shit that’s happening in our lives.
For instance, Oisinn, it has to be said, looks 10 years older than his actual age. It's no secret that all the moo he made from Eau d'Affluence – Scent of Tigeris gone. He asked me in the Jo what estate agent the old dear was using to sell the gaff and I suspect there's going to be one for sale on Shrewsbury Road pretty soon.
JP’s orm is in a cast. He broke three fingers trying to put his hand through the window of an X5 that him and his old man were trying to repossess. I think if they x-rayed his hort, they’d discover that that’s broken too.
And, as for Fionn, for the last two months, all anyone's heard him talk about is, like, the pension levy? And he'sa teacher, the poor focker – that's a vow of poverty in itself.
But today we can all forget about the Current Economic Blahdy Blah. No one even minded paying the four hundred and fifty snots for the return flight. The attitude is, as long as it keeps people from Carlow and Louth away from Murrayfield. It might be true that, economically, we’re heading back to the 1970s, but the last thing any of us wants is a bunch of O’Reilly the Builder types showing up and trying to associate themselves with us.
One or two of Dorce's mates stop by to say basically hi. Even though they're Clongowes, they'd still have, like, a begrudgingrespect for us? One of them goes, "This time last year, huh?" then he sort of, like, laughs.
He's obviously heard the story. One of my greatest ever moments – and that's saying something with the life I'veled.
It was, like, Munster versus Toulouse. To cut a long story short, we ended up watching it in Sinnotts, of all places – a seething hogpen of sweating Munster fans, with me and the three goys sitting smack bang in the middle of them, listening to them sing The Fieldsand whatever else.
Up my sleeve, roysh, I had my secret weapon – a universal TV remote, which I picked up in Argos in Stephen’s Green for something like fifteen snots. In the first half, roysh, about five seconds before Denis Leamy got over for Munster’s try, I hit a random button through the canvas of my sailing jacket and suddenly everyone was left staring at the Hollyoaks omnibus, screaming blue focking murder.
Of course me and the goys were cracking on to be aspissed off as everyone else. I was looking around going, "This is bang out of order – and we're talkingbang?" laying it on like peanut butter.
The borman found the actualremote and stuck the rugby back on. So everyone copped that Munster had scored and the place went literally ballistic – you know what their fans are like when they're winning.
The next thing, roysh, Rog is stepping up to add the points. He does his whole routine and, just as he's coming out of his golfer's stance, it's like, flick– an old episode of Columbo. The place went Hertz Van Rental.
I was there, "This is no longer funny – if it even everwas?" while Oisinn and JP demanded that the borman find out what the fock was going on.
I was worried that we’d maybe overdone it. But we managed to get away with it until Toulouse brought the game level in the second half and – story of my life – I storted to get a bit cocky. I managed to find the volume button and actually highered up the sound. That’s when somebody copped what was happening and I quickly disappeared under a landslide of angry red jerseys.
I tell Dorce’s two mates, “If I’d known then that, in twelve months time, we’d be the ones playing in a European Cup final, I’d have been laughing all the way to A&E!” and they just shake their heads in, like, total admiration, as if to say, what a legend.
Suddenly, we’re next in the queue. We step up, hand over our passports and the bird straight away asks us each for 40 snots. She says it’s a new charge for printing out your boarding pass.
I laugh and I shrug, then hand over the old plastic. “Classic,” I go. “As long as it keeps non-southsiders out of Murrayfield this weekend.”
Fionn’s there, “Speaking of non-southsiders, what does your old man think of this Thornton Hall business?” I look at him with, like, a blank face.
“The new prison,” he goes. “It doesn’t look like it’s going ahead any time soon. Presumably it’s put the mockers on his plans to turn Mountjoy into a six-star hotel and casino.”
I'm on the point of going, "And this affects me how?" when the bird tells me – me!– that my credit cord's been declined.
rossocarrollkelly.ie