Dear IRFU, You may recall that we contacted you a fortnight ago in our capacity as committee members of CFOUR, the Concerned Friends of Ulster Rugby. Despite the fact that we were not even afforded the courtesy of a reply, we want to put it on record that we Northerners are not bitter people and, contrary to public perceptions, do not bear grudges for any meaningful period of time. Obviously the entire vista has changed dramatically in the two short weeks since Twickenham and we're taking this opportunity to up-date you.
In our letter we had outlined our grave fears for the future of our beautiful game and the knock-on effect that might have on those much-cherished spring-time excursions to Lansdowne Road. At the time we were understandably anxious and perhaps, in the heat of the moment, things were said that might have been better left within the four walls of the committee room. We particularly regret the hurtful remarks we made about the coach. How could we have been so misguided and so short-sighted?
This has been a traumatic period in the short life of CFOUR. By the middle of last week there were very few takers for the "Ulster Expects" travel, accommodation and match ticket all-in package that we had put together. As you were no doubt aware, one failure after another had left the natives very restless. Even the boys from the local soccer club were jumping on the bandwagon with taunts that it was now easier to get rid of tickets for internationals at Windsor Park than it was for Ireland rugby games. It's alright having a joke among ourselves but when people like that can sense they have you on the back foot, then you know you're in trouble.
It had now become clear that interest was at an all-time low and we were faced with the appalling prospect of having extra tickets on our hands and the nightmare scenario of having to sell them at face value on the day. Profits from international ticket sales have been built into our annual budget of our clubs for decades and how the first XV was going to survive this dramatic downturn in revenue was anyone's guess.
Morale reached a low point on Tuesday night when a bunch of malcontents stunned everyone else in the club bar and went public with the suggestion that they were toying with the idea of a day-trip. They still planned to go the match but, unbelievable as it might seem now, they intended to drive down in a BMW convoy on Saturday morning and come straight home after the game. This seemed to us like the final act of treachery and we realised it was time to act.
In keeping with that great rugby tradition, we immediately formed a sub-committee and went on a charm offensive. One chap has a good job in the currency department of some bank or other in Belfast. He made some photocopies of the latest exchange rate figures and we put those up all around the walls of the clubhouse so that everyone could see how far our pound sterling would go in your Southern shops. The fight-back had started.
We also began a sustained and fairly shameless campaign of reminiscences targeted at the older members. This concentrated on casually dropping Dublin-related rugby anecdotes into otherwise unrelated conversations at the bar. The majority of these centred around those crazy Saturday nights we used to spend on Leeson Street in those days when we were still single men. Before long there was hardly a dry eye in the clubhouse and we knew then we were winning the propaganda war.
By last Thursday night we were pretty sure that disaster has been averted although the numbers were a far cry from those halcyon days of the 1980s. Even the BMW boys had abandoned their plans. A compromise of sorts had been reached to placate them whereby we abandoned the original plan to get the Friday night train and instead decided to travel down together on the Saturday morning special.
A few of the boys were a bit nervous going through Lurgan and Portadown after all the recent trouble they've had with hijacked cars being left across the tracks. Don't get us wrong, we're totally in favour of the individual's civic right to protest. It's just we feel passionately that it shouldn't be allowed to extend to days on which international rugby fixtures are being played. But the journey passed off without incident apart from one minor altercation just outside Drogheda when an argument broke out over ownership of a hip-flask. A rousing communal rendition of Ireland's Call, however, soon got us back on course.
Once in Dublin it was straight to Grafton Street. The women went shopping and we parked ourselves in our favourite little bar. Then the fun really started. We sat down beside a group of the nicest Scottish guys you could ever hope to meet. They were on a stag weekend, taking in the game along the way. They hadn't been to bed for close to 48 hours so the conversation was really flowing. Luckily nine of them didn't have tickets and we were able to off-load our spares and make a modest little profit along the way.
As the afternoon wore on, the pub games got more and more enjoyable. A particularly good one was picking a joint team of players none of whom had been born in either Ireland or Scotland or had Irish or Scottish accents. It proved easier than you might think. One troublemaker then brought up the thorny issue of why there was only one Ulster-man on the Ireland team and asked us if it had anything to do with decommissioning. Embarrassed, we gazed into the distance and let the moment pass.
By this stage the pints were four and five deep on the table and, in the expectation that defeat was a certainty, we decided to stay on in the pub and watch the game on television. It proved to be a master-stroke. How else would we have been able to witness the heroic genius of David Humphreys at such close quarters? It's like we always say - when you need a job done, send for the Ulster boys.
The rest of the evening is a bit of blur and really the first thing most of us remember is getting on the train late on Sunday afternoon. On the way home we met a lovely bunch of guys from Crossmaglen who had been to some sort of Gaelic football match in Dublin that afternoon. We asked them if they had made a weekend of it and gone to Lansdowne Road as well but most of them didn't seem to know what we were talking about. When we explained, one said that if there weren't any Armagh men on the team, then he really wasn't interested.
Monday was spent nursing some sore heads but we regrouped in the club bar on Tuesday night to wring the last bit of pleasure out of our epic weekend. And, you'll be pleased to hear, two motions were passed unanimously. One was a proposal to grant Warren Gatland the freedom of the borough of Bangor. The second was to suspend the activities of CFOUR on condition that Humphreys starts against Italy. We have jumped. Now it's your turn.
