For the love of rugby

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4.30 am on Sunday morning and Jon and I sit in the Celtic club in Melbourne hoping to watch history in the making; one of the things I miss most about being in Europe is watching and attending six nation matches, those moments when people put aside club grievances and embrace the totality of Irish rugby, when songs born in Connaught, adopted by Munster become the anthems of a nation; although lets be honest, no matter who sings it, it still resembles a group of drunken Irish men wailing like cats.

I am a late convert to Rugby (although some say those are the most zealous), having grown up in Monaghan where the GAA is the mainstay of the community (we’re still not sure how Tommy Bowe came to be…..). I blame Jonathan Maguire for bringing me to a schools rugby match, a rugby league match and a rugby union match all in the one weekend, a baptism by fire into rugby. Then discovering the joys of Magners (then Celtic) league, Heineken cup and six nations, made for a lot of sport watching. But its been great, something which Jon and I have enjoyed together (freezing in the Stade de France, drinking beer in the sunshine in Italy and sitting in Croke park as rugby played its first match in the home of the GAA).

But I have to admit to being a little bit sad that even though the sport has played a big part in our lives, our choice to be over in Australia meant that we could not be there on the day to experience the pride, the passion and overall the love of Irish rugby and what a great match it was. Phrases like hopes of a nation, last grand slam being 61 years ago had been bandied about in the press for the last week and it was one of those games where both teams had the ability to win, even to the last minute (O’Gara will go down in the annals of Irish rugby as the man who with drop goal won the match for Ireland but more importantly Stephen Jones will go down as the man who lost the match for Wales). The Celtic club was in chaos, it definitely fell into the “acceptable reasons for grown men to cry” category. Watching Paul O’Connell raising the triple crown and Brian O’Driscoll following with the Six nations cup will be a memory long cherished by all.

Although I was sad to have the missed that moment in the Millenium Stadium when the final whistle was blown, when I read in the Australian newspapers how, at 7AM on Sunday morning all the fans coming from the Irish bars stopped traffic by holding scrums and lineouts, and rucking and mauling their way up the streets of Sydney, while the police land bouncers ooked on baffled because they “thought St Patricks day was over?”, it makes me realise, that whilst I may not have been in Cardiff to watch the Irish slog their way to victory, I and all the expats who stayed up all night to watch the match felt as Irish in that moment as we did the day we left Ireland.

Jonathan says: I actually felt jetlagged the next day (no that wasn't side effects of aussie beer), but thankfully the Melbourne Wine and Food festival helped us out. Being upstairs in the Celtic Club when most other bars in Melbourne are shut is strange - the place has no windows and guys sneaking into the stairwell to smoke, but apart from the occasional welsh, french, italian, english or crazy scotsman in the frontrow, you could have been in Ireland - the place even handed out free toasted sandwiches at 4:30am (come to think of it, maybe they only had a restaurant license). Despite the late hour there was no messy-ness and the atmosphere built up as each game moved along - a damn good night. The only photo I have of it unfortunately is here.

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Photos

The Celtic Club
Place is pretty old going back to the 1870's but 2 big screens at either end of the room was a good set up for the rugby.