Sport

The tag season is over! As of last saturday, our team, the Schnakey Ones have ended their season in some small amount of glory! We managed to win our league, despite finishing fourth in the table due to losing our last two games. Then, last saturday, some of us joined together with some friends from another team and went down to Cork to take part in a One Day Blitz.

We managed to win the plate in the C division, despite battling an array of disabilities, such as hangovers, indian revenge, not knowing how to get to the rugby club and never having trained together as a team - not to mention an unhealthy dosage of pessimism about our chances!!

Despite the various injuries, and the hassle of trying to organise training and getting enough people together each week to be able to field a team, not to mention the team politics, it has been fantastic fun. I'd probably hesitate before undertaking to 'manage' a team through another season, but I definitely wouldn't hesitate to pull my boots on, tape up my fingers, put on my knee brace, strap up my ankle and head onto the pitch!

Schnake on! One league cup and one blitz plate - the double!!

Marty

We had our first training session last thursday - great fun, although hard to play a proper game of tag when the teams are made up of 3 or 4 people! Hopefully this week more people will turn up. In the pub afterwards, we went through the various other names that people have suggested, which included The Ruck Savages, We Will Ruck You, Win Or Lose - On The Booze, etc etc, and eventually settled on 'The Schnakey Ones', although since then there has been a few suggestions that maybe 'The Schnakey Few' would have been a better name.

I threw together a quick web page to keep track of what we're up to here, including a list of the panel etc. There has been some dissent amongst the team about our manager, Shane "I'm The Gaffer' Taafe, so is now planning on making everyone run laps until morale improves...

Mart

Many months ago, Shane and I were idly discussing the possibilities of starting our own Tag Rugby team to take part in the ITRA Summer League (http://www.tagrugby.ie). At the time, lots of people said 'yeah, sure! I'll play!'. On March 1st, registration for the summer leagues opened, but sadly we didn't notice for two days, and as a result the best venues were gone (for us, would have been Booterstown). So, after some hurried emails to the tune of 'Do you remember back in November you said you'd play Tag? - Well, you did', we registered our team last night. There was a bit of a rush to make sure we got the last place going in the Terenure RFC Beginners League, so we had to come up with a name in a hurry. Between myself, Tom, Oisin, Jill and Susan, the best we could come up with was 'Keltic Kangaroos', (I prefered Wallaby Wannabies, but was over-ruled!).....

So, Shane, as the only one of us who has played Tag before has kindly agreed to take up the roles of Captain, Coach, Manager, Trainer, Physio, Mascot and Personal Trainer. We're hoping to train somewhere around Booterstown/Blackrock maybe on thursdays and again on saturday or sunday for people who want to. Shane is also suggesting that we play his work team, and hopefully we can also play the Hostelworld team, so we may have some experience under our belts before we play our first competitive game in late May...

Go the 'Roos!

I've decided that there is no point in letting a little cold get between me and one of my favourite hobbies, so I've decided to start diving in Ireland! Up until now, I've only dived in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand. All of these locations are all tropical or sub-tropical diving, so my 5mm one piece wet suit was more than adequate for my needs. However! Irish waters are another matter entirely...I've heard people comment on water temperatures that are measured in single figures....

Anyway! Best not to dwell on that just yet. I've decided to join a local Sub Aqua club called the Dalkey Sub Aqua Club, as they seem to be the best organised of the dive clubs near Blackrock. They are part of the CFT or Irish Underwater Council, which is the Irish equivalent of the BSAC. The idea is a club based system where the club owns at least one boat as well as a compressor, and is capable of training it's newer members. I'm expecting to 'cross over' to the CFT system as a 2 star CMAS diver, and looking forward to the opportunity to get a bit of training - my underwater navigation skills are laughable once the current picks up!

I'll also get the chance to use my new Apeks ATX 200 regs that I got myself for my birthday in December, which I'm really looking forward to! They were fairly spectacularly expensive, and I have two other big diving expenses coming up: a dry suit (a necessity if I'm really going to jump into 9 degree celsius water) and a strobe. One of the guys I dived with in New Zealand recently got a strobe for the same digital camera as mine, and the results are spectacular, and I must follow suit...

Looking forward to getting those regs wet!

Marty

Just heard that I didn't get lucky with the IRFU supporter's club lottery for tickets to the Six Nations game of Ireland vs. Wales. Damn! Aside from actually wanting to see the game, I also wanted to experience some of the atmosphere I remembered from the last time I had watched a game in Lansdowne (Munster vs. Leinster, 2001). The intervening years I have spent in Australia and New Zealand, which are, with some exceptions, atmosphere deserts.

In the three or so years I was in Australia, I was an avid rugby supporter. I attended about 90% of the NSW Waratahs' home games in Sydney, as well as travelling down to lovely Canberra for the final of the Super 12s (Crusaders vs. Brumbies). I also made it to an astonishing 13 games of the 2003 Rugby World Cup. The world cup games definitely had a much better atmosphere than the Super 12s games, but 200% of 'not much' is still not much.

Watching Ireland play, with about 20,000 fellow supporters (including my parents!) was, however, something special. In my (autographed!) copy of Stephen Larkham's World Cup Diary he states that when they played us, they found it almost impossible to hear the line out calls over the cheering of the Irish fans. He mentions this a few times, but in other parts of the book claims that Australia has the best supporters. The Australian supporters were given 'free' scarfs at hats at all of their games, which led us to one of our favourite songs of the world cup: "You're only wearing yellow cuz it's free." At one game in particular, I think it was the semi-final of Australia vs. New Zealand, we met an Aussie who told us he was being paid to be there and stand up and try and get some noise going. He was dressed head to toe in yellow, was sitting on his own and didn't know anything about rugby, so it seemed like a plausible story.

The highlight of the pool stage was the Ireland vs. Argentina game in Adelaide. During the game, I honestly thought that I was having a heart attack it was so tense. It was only when I went 'Ohmigod I'm having a heart attack', and had both Dave and Charlie shout 'So am I!', that I realised it was just nerves. The post-match celebrations were fantastic, but got off to a slow start as we were so emotionally drained.

The low point was the quarter final match against France, where we were comprehensively destroyed in the first half. I remember sitting there in numb shock, just thinking 'What happened?? I actually thought we were better than this!'. I had started to Believe in Irish rugby, that we were special, that with Woody and Drico, we were going places. But I think that belief was echoed in the Irish camp - the other 13 members of the squad believed in their talismans too much, and ended up not taking enough initiative of their own. Maggsy managed to snap me out of my disbelieving stupor by barging over for a try, and Drico even made me smile by crossing the line himself a couple of times. Still, it was a rude shock.

Once Ireland were out of contention, and my belief in the team almost shattered, it was possible to relax a bit more for the remaining matches of the world cup. The atmosphere at the other quarter final I attended (ABs vs South Africa) was pretty dead, and both of the semi-finals were a bit one-sided so the crowd never really got going.

The final on the other hand, was everything one might hope for in such an event. It was amazing, absolutely fantastic. Charlie and I were wearing our Irish jerseys (of course! at every match, there's always at least one!), and were seated between a pack of rabid English supporters and a flock of equally rabid Aussies. Both sides were confident that we would support them, and neither of us were quite sure who we were supporting ourselves. When Tuqiri scored the opening try, we both leaped from our seats - not in jubilation but complaining! That was when we realised it - we were supporting England! We managed, barely, to resist joining in the singing of 'Swing Low', but it was a near thing.

So aside from watching Ireland play, and the final, the atmosphere at almost every game I attended in Australia was dead, with most of the aussies around me talking about cricket, TV, dinner or beer, rather than the game. I remembered the friendly banter and singing at the Munster vs. Leinster game with fondness and was looking forward to the next time I attended a match in Lansdowne.

When I returned to Ireland in 2005, I managed to get tickets for all of Ireland's Autumn internationals. I also arranged tickets for Charlie, Louise and Caolan to see the first game against New Zealand, but unfortunately, their tickets were in the North Terrace which was closed for the game due to fire damage. As a result, Lansdowne was missing a quarter of it's crowd, and that resulted in a reduced atmosphere. Aside from the crowd, Ireland didn't do anything on the pitch to get the crowd going, except for their gutsy determination to score a try instead of taking 3 points when they had the opportunity.

The next two internationals, against Australia and Romania weren't much better, atmosphere-wise. The biggest difference I found was that the supporters were generally actually watching the game, and were quiet except when discussing the game.

I commented on the lack of atmosphere to a few people and they all suggested that I had to go to a Six Nations game for the 'Real Atmosphere'. I think I have a ticket to see France vs. Ireland, but am still hoping to get a ticket to Ireland vs. Wales here in Dublin! It might turn out to be the last international played in the old stadium!