By Ian B
August 21 2003

Our preparation for the 2003 Heineken Cup Final began back in October 2002: as soon as the venue for the final was announced as being Dublin, we booked flights and hotel accommodation in Landsdowne Road. Regardless of who got through, we were determined to go and have a ‘craic’-ing weekend.
The day that we flew out to Milan to watch the next of our next pool games against Calvisano, January 10th , was the day that the first 6000 final tickets went on sale. I was on the web site some 15 minutes early, and the second that the linky thing changed to ‘Buy’, I was trying to acquire our tickets. When the message ‘Too Many Connections’ started to pop up, Ali got on the phone to try to secure tickets that way, but eventually, after 20 minutes of refreshing and moving on to the next screen, our order was confirmed. We were going to Dublin, with tickets to watch the European Cup Final regardless of which two teams played.

With everything now booked, it was simply a matter of waiting for the 24th May. After crashing out against Munster at Welford Road, Tigers hopes of a European treble ended. At the end of the day: ‘If ye ain’t good enough, ye ain’t good enough!’ Tough.

The prospect of travelling to Dublin to watch an Irish side win the HC was the stuff of dreams. The travelling Munster supporters were fantastic and left Leicester, not only with a feeling of ‘justice being done’ but also with the best wishes and support of many Tiger fans in the next round against Toulouse. But it was not to be: Toulouse going on to Dublin to meet their compatriots from Perpignan.

So……

Having just agreed to take on the role of editor on theleicestertigers.co.uk, I thought it would be a sporting thing to do if I sent best wishes and a good luck message to both teams appearing in the final. The Toulouse web site does not appear to have a message board of any description, USAP, on the other hand do have ‘le message board’. Marvellous!

I got down to composing my work of art and to make my message as understandable as it could be to as many French fans as possible, I tried to keep the English as simple as possible { mainly because simple English is the only kind I know, but hey!}:

‘From the supporters of Leicester Tigers.
The very best of luck in your HCup Final in Dublin
Many Tiger supporters are going to Ireland, and many will be shouting for USAP’

Before pressing the send button I had one of those brain-waves that seems like a good idea at the time, but usually turns out to be a disaster in the making:
‘I know’, I thought, ‘I’ll send my good-luck message in French!’

But my mastery of French is a limited to asking for ‘two large beers’ and ‘two ham and cheese baguettes, please’ {those who travel to French games with the Away Supporters and the ‘Crouching Tigers’ will instantly recognise this as the staple diet of the roaming rugby fan!}.

So………..

How to get my message translated????

Another storming idea – e-translation. There are sites on the web that specialise in translating from almost any language on the planet to almost any other! After a quick Yahoo search, I found a site that would carry out this service, free of charge, using an automated, electronic translation…….. thingy {?}

I had already cut my message from the USAP site and proceeded to paste it into the ‘Translate From’ window then selected ‘English to French’ – this is sssooooo easy!

‘Translate’ ………….wait…………… the screen refreshes, and ……..well, something didn’t quite look right: some of the words did not look as though they were anything to do with my original message.

Hmmmmm…. How to check what the translation means?

Obvious: I’m on a translation site, just cut the translated version of my message, paste it back in to the top window, change the ‘English to French’ so that it reads ‘French to English’ and hey-presto…….

‘Translate’ ………….wait…………… the screen refreshes, and my original message, translated back in to English, now said:

‘From the supports (posts) of the tigers of Leicester
Great fortune is extremely mouldy in your Finale of the HCup in Dublin
Many tiger supports (posts) are/will be going / travelling to Ireland, and mostly will be screaming at USAP’

Yes, well now, not quite what I’d envisaged. The translation had added a little ‘je ne sais quoi’ to the proceedings, or as my e-translator friend would say ‘I’m not saying a mouldy truncated duck noise’ !

After a few more attempts with a new and improved e-translator, things started to look as though they said in French, what I had meant to say in my simple English. {are you still following this?}

Success!

I duly posted the {hopefully} accurate translation on the USAP site and shortly afterwards received an email along the lines: ‘thank you for you kind wishes, regards’ from a USAP supporter who calls him / her self Verplanke.

Job done.

Now, we planned to fly to Dublin from Stansted on the Friday morning, catching the 08:15 plane which meant getting up at the un-earthly hour of 04:00a.m. In the weeks prior to this weekend, we had a call from Ali’s brother to ask if he and his wife could stop over at our house sometime – that night, it transpired, was the Thursday night before we were due to fly out on the Friday morning. ‘OK, no problem, but you’ll have to fend for yourselves on Friday ….’ we explained. They were grateful for the bed and understood that arrangements had been made. So saying, they arrived on Thursday evening, and after something to eat and a bit of chat, Ali’s brother suggested a visit to the local hostelry for a swift pint. Clearly, visiting Dublin, we had to do some quality checks on the Guinness that is served up in the village, just as a comparison with the Dublin version, you understand – and a sample of one is no good – you must have a decent sample size …... We went out at about half past nine with the intentions of getting back relatively early {up at 04:00 next day etc.}….. and, as you might expect, we retired at around 11:30.

Friday

The problem with knowing that you need to get up early is that you invariably wake up half an hour before the alarm is set to go off, so four hours later at 03:30, I was lying in bed waiting for the beepy alarm to go ‘beep’.

As we made our way to Stansted, we thought: ‘Not to worry, we can catch some zeds later at the hotel.’

The trip to Dublin and our resting place for the next few days, Ariel House, was good and we arrived at about 11:00. The rooms were not ready for us, so we dropped the cases off and headed into the city. The hotel itself was just a two minute walk from the ground and the Dart station.

We did the tourist-y things, found somewhere to eat then sampled our first Guinness in the factory itself at around 1:00. The thing is that, as self appointed quality monitors, we thought that a single sample may be mis-leading: we felt that a more in-depth investigation into the quality of the Guinness in Dublin was called for. So after a quick shower and change back at the hotel, we called on Nikki , who was staying just down the road at Jury’s, then walked into Ballsbridge in search of sustenance. This was another first on a rugby trip for me – gin and tonic – went down very nicely, thank you very much and has now become a daily feature during the hot summer afternoons.

Then a taxi took us all into Dublin where we searched for a traditional Irish pub, playing traditional Irish music i.e. ‘Wild Rover’ and selling traditional Irish Guinness. Found the ideal place{ sorry, can’t remember the name of the pub} and ventured up stairs to the live music bar – and there we stayed until throwing out time at 02:00, an undetermined number of Guinni later. From what I remember, the band was excellent, the company, good and the Guinness, plentiful. We met our first USAP and Toulouse fans and pledged our support for USAP. I seem to remember arranging to meet one of the USAP fans back in the same pub the following night for the time honoured tradition of swapping shirts. TIP – this is easier to achieve if you actually know where you are to start with!.

Once outside and on the main thoroughfare we hailed a taxi{ using the technique of Nikki standing in the middle of the road until someone stopped} and managed to get back to Jury’s where we called in for a night-cap, as you do. The time was around 3a.m. and getting in for 24 hours since we woke on Friday morning and set out for Stansted.

Ali, by this time was, shall we say, a little bit wobbly on the feet After a short walk back to our own hotel, we were saved from the challenge of actually trying to use the key by being let in by one of the night porters.

Now, sober, Ali is very bright girl: she’s good with numbers, maths, computers, logic problems, crosswords, {dice}, DIY projects, you name it, but on this occasion, shortly after entering the hotel, she was faced with what appeared to be a massive intellectual challenge: stairs. I looked down from the first flight after going on ahead to open the door to our room to see Ali looking at the stairs as though it was some kind on multi-dimensional puzzle in space and time that would have stumped the combined intellect of Albert Einstein and Steven Hawking. She looked up at me with a look that said: ‘How the hell am I supposed to get up there from down here?’

Obstacle overcome, after a short run-up, we finally got to bed at about 4 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Saturday

The full Irish breakfast is a wonder to behold: it just like a full English but with local delicacies on the plate as well as the bacon, eggs, sausage etc. and includes a selection of different bread, toast and drinks. Incredibly, we were both up and ready for our cooked breakfast, and feeling not too bad , at 08:00 on Saturday morning, having had around four hours of {somewhat} interrupted sleep with irregular visits to the bathroom, which, fortunately, we seemed to find quite easily. For some reason, the water in my glass was a bit shaky, due, we decided, to the trains passing by some 300 metres away! The breakfast room was occupied by an assortment of overseas visitors, but the vast majority of people were wearing Tigers shirts. Those who could stand to nod their head at that time of the day did so. Most just managed to recognise the colours through the haze and offer a grimacing smile and a barely audible ‘ ….g’mornin’…..’

An elderly couple in the corner look on agape:
‘Is there a soccer game on, or somthin’?’, the husband asked in his American drawl.
‘No’, we said, then added hopefully,‘…rugby’.
‘And who are you guys playing?’
‘Errrm, we are not…’, then tried to explain about the European Cup and who was in the final and why we, as none participant Tiger supporters, were there.
‘Ah!’, he said after a few moments digesting this information, ‘Well, we don’t have rugby in our country’.
We didn’t argue either way!

Before venturing out into the city for the second part of our Dublin weekend, we called Nikki. She sounded as though she had inherited both of our hang-overs from the night before by some sort of osmosis, we didn’t understand this – we felt fine.

‘I’m stopping in and watching the Super 12’s’, she said. You could almost hear that her eyes were shut!
‘Oh, OK. We’re off to the Jameson’s factory today, sure you won’t join us?’ we asked.
‘Urrrrrgh no…’, and then , ‘…I think I’ll just watch a bit of rugby and go back to bed…’

Whatever.

Back to the city on the Dart. Walking around the streets of Dublin, we finally saw the French fans who had largely been conspicuous by their absence the night before, though Tigers were everywhere! It was also good to see representation from the other ZP teams, but by far the biggest single group of supporters {apart from Toulouse and USAP} were Tigers.

We headed for the Jameson’s factory. Sure enough, when the tour guides asked for volunteers, two gentlemen and two ladies, to take part in a whiskey tasting later on, Ali was there like a shot. At the end of the tour, each of the volunteers was asked to taste and compare an assortment of best selling whiskey from around the world. Of course, Ali chose the Jameson’s as the best from the selection and was rewarded with a certificate granting her the lofty status of Official Irish Whiskey Taster. I wonder if she can now put the letters OIWT after her name!

On the bus ride from the Jameson’s factory back to the Dart station, we found ourselves sitting next to a couple from Gloucester – made obvious from the official merchandise they were wearing. Being in Tiger shirts, we were ignored for almost the entire journey.

When they stood to get off, Ali said: ‘Good luck in your final against Wasps’

‘Oh! Thanks’ the shock in this lady’s voice was tangible – best wishes from those arrogant Tiger types – whatever next?

Time was getting on, so we headed off to the game after a short visit to the Jameson’s shop. We dropped our purchases and joined the, now, mass of rugby types heading along Landsdowne Road.

I don’t do match reports, if you were there – you saw it, if not – it was on TV….. moving on….

After showering and changing Ali, Nikki and me headed back into Dublin. We ate in what appeared to be a converted bank, that is, a bank that is now a pub / eating place. Suitably fed, we embarked on a tour of the drinking establishments of the Temple Bar quarter of the city. After {about} four, and at around 8:30, Nikki ‘the light-weight’{her description, not mine} made her excuses and returned to her hotel.

We returned, more by luck than judgement, to the hostelry we had frequented the night before where there was a band, oddly enough, singing the ‘Wild Rover’.

This was the feature of Saturday night – every bar we went into had a live sing-ist, every sing-ist did:

‘…. no-nay never…’ Clap-clap-clap-clap ‘…. no-nay never no morrrrrre…’

The last place we went in was on a main road by the river {sorry, cannot be more accurate, for some reason!}. As we walked in, there was a singer to the left of the entrance doing a fine old job, stopping every now and then to get the Eurovision results!

The only place available for us to sit was, you guessed it, right at the front.

Partaking of a Jameson’s, having had my fill of Guinness for the weekend, the singer said:

‘Now, its time for a traditional Irish folk song you might know - ‘Wild Rover’– you can join in if you like with the clapping if you like, but it’s not compulsory’

‘Yes it is’, I said.

‘Oh! Yes It Is’, pointing at me, ‘he says so – and he’s my agent’

Well, what else could we do – at the requisite juncture, we lead the ‘clap-clap-clap-clap’ thing!

This seemed like a good time to cal it a night, so off we went to Ariel House for the last time.

Sunday

Not much to report – breakfast – taxi – huge queue at the airport because there was only a couple of people at the security gate, one of which as on permanent ‘Daily Star’ cross-word duty.

Fortunately, we were ‘let in’ by a fellow Tiger who we had met on a previous trip to Calvisano. Good job too- if we had gone to the end, I’m sure that we would have missed our flight. {Thank you again Ian {?} sorry, don’t know your surname}

Home was only an hour away followed by a 90 minute drive to chez nous.

We love Ireland and its inhabitants and we adore Dublin and its varied culture and produce, especially the beverage variety!

Did our Dublin HC Final weekend live up to expectation? Yes and more. Every time we go to Ireland we feel more a home!

We shall certainly be returning ‘home’ to Ireland at some time in the future, rugby weekend or not.


PS – I never did get to swap shirts with the USAP fan.