"You may award the try"

Another week, another blog from foreign climes, as I spent the weekend in Rome. Rather than sampling the delights of the eternal city however, I spent the majority of my visit in the pub due to my travelling companion's lack of energy. It’s only been a few months since I was last there but I couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty going all that way to sit on my backside drinking Guinness in an Irish bar. It’s certainly not everyone’s idea of a successful trip to Rome but then I suppose it depends upon your criteria for success.

I was in Rome to watch Ireland play Italy in the Six Nations rugby competition and although we didn’t have tickets to the match and Ireland were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempt to win the championship it was still a brilliant weekend. It’s what I was saying about criteria for success you see, not just in terms of trips but sport too. I know some people think it’s strange that I follow the Irish rugby team so vehemently despite being unmistakably English. Although I have Irish parents and a passport to prove it I was borne, shaped and made aware in the highways and by ways of England. I was brought up in Yorkshire and educated in the county’s finest seats of learning (Pope Pius, Barnsley College, Hull). I have also spent the last seven years residing in a county that must be able to claim to be one of the most nationalistically English of the lot, yet I could never bring myself to support the English rugby team. So seeing the Six nations slip away from Ireland in the dying seconds of not one but two matches was more than compensated for by the thorough going over that the men in green dished out to England at Croke Park the other week.

I’m all too aware that the joy of victory is fleeting whereas the despair of defeat lingers for weeks like a dull pain but as long as you have something to sweeten the pill things don’t look quite so bad. As my team is Ireland and since England had a rather unpleasant habit of beating them regularly (and comprehensively) during my formative years I enjoy watching them lose. However, as with all things I am singularly inconsistent because the week before I went to see England play France at Twickenham; ‘the home of Rugby.’ I stood amid the chinless faces and turned up collars to cheer England on. Not however, through any patriotic conversation but rather because a French defeat would bring the championship closer to Ireland. Although England duly obliged it wasn’t quite enough in the long run.

Watching Ireland’s grip first tighten then release in Rome we drank on into the evening. Next day the fleeting joy of insobriety was soon to be replaced by the dull lingering pain of hangover. Yet I’ll still remember it as an excellent St. Patrick’s Day; it’s all about your criteria for success.