Hardest work was not on the field

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. - Virginibus Puerisque, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Well, whatever about travelling hopefully (more like in dread really) at least once they arrived Ireland laboured successfully in Krasnoyarsk. Labour isn't the word for it.

From the 4.30 a.m. wake-up calls and departure on Thursday morning, to the return at 5.00 p.m. on Sunday, that was hard labour from pillar to post and back again, most especially in the 80 minutes-plus at the Centralny Stadium on Saturday.

The whole thing was an experience anyway. As much as anything, the memories will be the travelling. Taking into account everything from coach journeys, taxi rides, plane trips and the red tape, about 34 of the 85 hours between leaving and returning home were taken up by travelling.

Oh, the red tape, especially in the unremittingly grim Vnukovo Airport in Moscow. After an hour confined in a grey, chilly arrival room, followed by a frenzied burst of filling forms (mostly in Russian) with a few biros doing the rounds, bags were individually collected and we were led out on to the main concourse.

There, the assembly of shifty-looking, sombre dark-haired men prompted one player to remark that they looked like extras for a movie shoot.

Foreigners are given the once over with an apparent mixture of curiosity and suspicion, and when 26 of the 83-strong party and athletes are clad in identikit tracksuits it heightens both the curiosity and the sense of security.

"Winning and getting home without anybody getting hurt," were immediately the twin targets as outlined by one player.

In truth, judging by the stories emanating from Irish supporters on the recent football World Cup qualifier in Moscow, travelling on to Siberia was assuredly a better bet.

For, not alone was the weather a good deal sunnier, it was nothing like as menacing or as inhospitable as was feared.

You could sense most of the local people in Krasnoyarsk had an innate liking for "foreigners" and a happy sense of humour.

Uniformed militia and police seemed to be everywhere, along with quiet, watchful well-dressed men. They'd either be sitting quietly in the foyer or smoking and reading on virtually every floor of our hotel.

Much to the surprise of the IRFU's Operations Manager Martin Murphy, and contrary to his warnings after a reconnaissance mission in July (which just stopped short of bringing your own door for your hotel room), the base for the squad and the IRFU committee, the October Hotel, was apparently spacious, comfortable and well fitted after some intense refurbishment in the intervening months.

"When you go to a place that you don't have much knowledge of it's nice that the place that you're going to spend most of your time in is comfortable," commented Anthony Foley.

"A lot of credit has to go to Martin Murphy, he went out well in advance and sorted it out for us. The IRFU did good in hiring a charter," said Foley, adding tongue-in-cheek, "they're not like the FAI".

"I wouldn't be too critical because of the way we travelled or whatever and the preparations wouldn't have been the best, but it had to be done that way and at least it's behind us."

That said, as many noted in Vnukovo Airport, it's as well Roy Keane never took up rugby.

Given long winters and shorter summers in a climate that ranges from plus-30 to minus-40 degrees, it's no wonder that those who can afford to dress light and well do so.

Many of the men carried handbags, while the trend for miniskirts amongst the leggy lovelies was like a throwback to the 80s.

The congregation in the boulevard surrounded by outdoor tented bars alongside the Yenesei River outside our hotel was as trendy as most places you'd see on Friday or Saturday nights, as was the constant, throbbing mix of Russian and western techno music from 6 p.m. 'till 11 p.m.

Good restaurants, pubs and nite clubs were by no means impossible to find in this increasingly westernised Russian outpost.

However, one of the problems about a quick in-and-out visit somewhere for a sports event is that you can draw too many conclusions.

Having made the hour-long coach journey from Krasnoyarsk airport in the depths of Thursday night, the return trip on a bright Sunday morning realised the full horror of some of the poverty that exists. Not quite on the scale of South African shanty towns or the vast outskirts of Buenos Aires, but reminiscent all the same.

As for the game itself, away matches in the Heineken Cup are eminently more intimidating. Estimates of its size fluctuated wildly from 12,000 to 25,000, but whatever it was, the atmosphere was diluted in a 60,000-seater ground.

The crowd's enthusiasm was greater than it's knowledge, wildly cheering on kicks or "tries" long after it was clear they were off target or play had been called back.

With a professional club scene of only six clubs, and away games a 9,000 km round trek, training in midwinter must be unimaginably difficult too. We were told that the Russians trained in an indoor stable, though one of their South African-born trio informed an Irish player on Saturday night that they played in an old plutonium plant that was entirely underground.

The Irish squad were obliged to stay up late on Saturday night to combat jet leg on returning home, which wouldn't have been tortuous for them, but this week in Greystones will be the squad's seventh out of 10 in camp of a wearying schedule.

It's surprising that they didn't reassemble until yesterday rather than on Sunday night, as the All Blacks did during their home tests last summer.

"Everything today was hard work," admitted Foley soon after the full-time whistle. "Getting out of bed today was hard work. But, y'know, it's stuff you have to do when you don't play well in competitions; you suffer the repercussions in years to come."