Is it right to embrace rugby as our new national sport?

Over the last few years, I've come to respect Niall Francis' writing. I don't always agree with him, but he's had a few interesting pieces that I've genuinely enjoyed reading.

With that said, his most recent article in the Sunday Independent - The people are embracing rugby as our new national sport - and rightly so - was a return to the type of writing that used to make me turn the page as soon as I read his name on the byline.

Right from the opening line - "Is it too easy to pen an 'aren't we great' article the week after collecting a Grand Slam?" I really did fear the worst. I did wonder that if this was too easy, why didn't he write something else?

To be fair, the first half of the article contains some fair points - rising TV ratings and attendances at games point to an increased interest, but still far from the "the nations' game". According to the 2015 Irish Sports Monitor ERSI report, rugby has six times less participation than soccer, and more than half as much as gaelic football. I had to read the sentence "He[Dylan Hartley] has a bigger rap sheet than Jay-Z." several times, and it still didn't make sense, is he saying the England captain has been found guilty of more crimes than the rap mogul? Frankly, I'm more surprised he knows who Jay-Z is than anything else.

The number of women who watch rugby union in this country is incredible. The number of women in the Aviva on match day. The number who travel. Their knowledge and ability to speak authoritatively is impressive. Mná na hÉireann find the game attractive and entertaining. The social aspect is good too.

I wonder if he knows they can vote now too? In seriousness, even without the events of this week, this is patronising in the extreme.

Strange that a 'minority' sport in this country can command a television audience in excess of 1.3 million.

I watch the FAI struggle with their player supply. Some obscure 20-somethings born in England of Irish parents playing fitfully and inconsistently for second division clubs. Jack Grealish of Aston Villa and Liam Kelly of Reading. Why are the FAI battling with the FA for the loyalty of these boys if they want to play for England? Nobody on this island knows who they are. A majority of our soccer team live and play for English championship sides. A minority play for Premier League sides - a tiny minority decent Premier League sides.

I've often wondered what audience some of the sports with higher participation rates would get if they were televised. Hi Ryle! Maybe Francis should ask around the Independent's office about Liam Kelly, they've been writing about him since November 2013 - Liam Kelly's wondergoal from the halfway line! If nothing else, he might have learned that the FAI aren't "battling with the FA" for Jack Grealish, his international allegiance was decided two years ago. Another lesson waiting to be learned was that six of the team that started against Turkey (note - a majority) play in the Premier League, and half of those (Coleman, Long and Hendrick) are currently in the top ten. Decent.

I look at hurling, which is a great game to watch, but for the last 50 years Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary have won practically every All-Ireland. Hurling is a parochial sport, what are the other 29 counties doing when these counties are strutting their stuff? How pleasing is it for the rest of the country when Kilkenny win another All-Ireland? How inclusive a sport is it that no more than seven counties in total can ever hope to win an All-Ireland? What percentage of the population is that? Can we say right now that hurling is the people's game on this island? I don't think so.

Turns out that 14 of the last 50 All Ireland Hurling titles (28%) have not been won by the trinity he mentions there. It must come as a great disappointment ot Francis that current champions Galway are not one of Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary. Coincidentally seven is the same number of schools that have won the Leinster senior cup since the dawn of the new millennium - and one of those (Blackrock) has won the title more times than every other winner combined. How pleasing is it to the rest of the schools when Neill's alma mater lift the title once again?

Ireland, given the talent at their disposal, do remarkably well in the round-ball game. Gritty and competitive but just truly awful to watch. The match against Turkey on Friday night was only a friendly. Who watched? Who cared? I am as patriotic as the next guy when it comes to interest in any team wearing green. The extent of my interest though is tuning in after the final whistle to listen to Eamon Dunphy and Liam Brady. Soccer is a world sport but we cannot compete with any of the top sides and we never win anything, nor are we likely to either.

I wonder how many will watch and care about the upcoming rugby summer tour to Australia? Francis should have listened to the next patriot wearing green, he might have learned that neither Dunphy nor Brady provided the post match analysis after the recent friendly against Turkey. In recent years, Martin O'Neill's side have defeated World Champions, and number one ranked side, Germany at Aviva stadium 1-0. Top side Italy were also beaten 1-0 in Euro 2016 - the latter result meaning that the Republic of Ireland are one of only three sides to beat Italy in both the World Cup and European Championships. As recently as October, Euro 2016 semi finalists Wales were put to the sword, in their own backyard no less. Finally, the Republic of Ireland are the current (and probably permanent) Nations Cup champions.

I look around and see what is happening and I see what the kids are interested in, I see the national interest, I see the television figures, I see the sell-out crowds and the evidence of the sustained and broad appeal and it suggests strongly to me that rugby suits the Irish psyche and its attraction and success have more than just caught the imagination. We are now following suit with New Zealand in welcoming it as our national game.

New Zealand's last home rugby international of 2017 drew a crowd of 30,021 to watch the All Blacks trounce South Africa 57-0 in September. Their soccer equivalents added 7,000 to that figure for a 0-0 draw against Peru two months later. We might want to have a word with the locals about what their national game is.

Further reading, some of Francis' columns I have enjoyed reading
Obsession with weights not such a hip fashion
What do we consider an acceptable price to be paid in later life for traumas we put our bodies through?

On a dark desert highway...

On the night of Friday, 11th August 2017, at about 8pm, I was driving north on Highway 285 in Colorado at 65mph (the posted speed limit) on my way to Boulder, I hit and killed a 500lb elk with my rental car, a Nissan Rogue SUV.

I had stopped earlier to refuel the car and get something to eat in Three Barrel Pizza restaurant in Del Norte, and was continuing on to the Best Western hotel room I had booked in Louisville. Night had fallen and the road was dark, with little in the way of streetlights. A truck driving against me had slightly dazzled me, and I didn't see the animal until right before I hit it. My first reaction was that it was a horse, such was the size of the creature. I genuinely can't remember if I managed to hit the brakes or not, but I think I did. The airbag deployed and deflated immediately. The car came to a complete stop, with the onboard notification system ringing in my ears there was a problem with the engine. The entire incident was over in about three seconds.

My first reaction was "what the hell just happened", closely followed by "are all of my limbs still attached and bending the way they're supposed to" and then "can I drive away from this??". Of course I couldn't, the engine block had taken the majority of the impact and had crumpled to a tangled mess. The windshield had spider-webbed, but not shattered apart from a small hole in the bottom corner on the passenger side which left tiny shards of glass in the passenger seat, and my backpack that was resting in the passenger side footwell. Strangely enough, the car stereo was not damaged, and was still streaming a Second Captains podcast episode from my phone, as well as informing me the next directions to take using the phone's GPS.

Satisfied that I hadn't been injured, I got out of the car and tried to flag down some of the traffic that was passing. A pick up truck pulled up in front of the rental car, and another car stopped in front of me, with two guys in their twenties in the front seats. "I've just hit a deer, I'm a tourist here on holidays, and I don't know what to do" I explained. "I think you've to call the police" was their advice. The woman who had been driving the pick up had walked around what remained of my car, and I repeated my explanation to her. She echoed the suggestion of the men in the car - call the police and report the incident. Having stayed in their car, they asked if I was ok, would she help me out, and drove off. She called the local police department, gave an approximate location and told me they'd arrive in about 15 minutes. By this stage I was pretty sure shock had set in, so had put on a hoodie to stay warm, and she asked me to sit in to the cab of her truck to help, and introduced me to her daughter who was traveling home with her. While I was sitting in the driver's seat, she examined the body, and informed me that I had hit an elk, not a deer as I had suspected. A big one.

An off duty policeman and his wife (or girlfriend, I never found out) pulled up in their own car, telling us that they'd had reports of a loose elk on the fields earlier that day and they were looking for him. "I found him, he's over there" I replied. He asked if I was injured, and applied the nerve tests - grip his two index fingers with both hands, then with each hand, then apply downward and upward pressure on his arm with both of my arms, then each arm separately, which I passed. I was able to turn my head without any impediment, so whiplash was ruled out. The only injuries I could find were a minor cut on my right arm, and a dull pain on the right side of the small of my back. He asked if I wanted an ambulance to take me to the hospital to get a complete check up, but honestly, there was no pain. That's not bravado or macho bullshit, I was genuinely free of pain. He told me I was lucky, he'd seen collisions where the animal had run off and the car was relatively undamaged, but the driver had to be taken to hospital.

By this time the local police had arrived, and proceeded to take a statement from me (basically everything above) and informed me that, since the incident had taken place outside of city limits, that the state troopers would need to be called. They called for a tow service to come and take what was left of the car away, which arrived a few minutes after the state troopers. Like the police, there were two of them, but in this case it was a senior officer and a trainee. They took my statement again, but also measurements of the road, estimates of where the impact had occurred, where the car came to rest, changes in direction, and where the body of the elk landed, about fix or six yards back in a ditch on the side of the road. Each party (the city police, the state troopers and the tow company) estimated the size of the animal at 500lbs.

I rang the rental company, and gave them the details of the incident, including the police incident id number. The car itself was covered by insurance, and I was told that if I rang back the following morning I would be issued with a replacement vehicle.

At this stage, all I was concerned about was where I was going to sleep that night (it was approx 10:30pm). The city police had rung around a few local hotels, but were unable to find a room. The state troopers took over and eventually found a room in Alamosa, about a twenty minute drive away. They would also give me a lift to the hotel, which is how I found myself in the back seat of a police charger. Chatting away to the senior officer while his trainee completed his measurements, I asked was I under suspicion in the back seat. Fortunately I was not, civilians are not permitted in the front seat, and had I been under any suspicion, then I'd be in handcuffs, would have had my Miranda rights read to me, and he would not be speaking to me.

On the ride to the hotel, I learned from the trainee that he had spent some time in Argentina, so I informed him that the Argentinian navy was founded by an Irishman, and the iconic Che Guevara poster had been created by an Irish artist and released to the world without copyright.

The next morning, the rental company informed me that a replacement car had been located in Colorado Springs, about a three hour drive away, and I would be compensated for a taxi journey with a receipt. The hotel's reception provided me with a number for a local taxi service, who quoted me a $250 fee to go to Springs (as the driver referred to it). Having no choice, I took the longest and most expensive taxi ride of my life, and set out again for Louisville after collecting a slightly older model of the same car that had been written off some 18 hours earlier.

A few people have asked for photos, and I did consider taking one, but after seeing the wreckage of the engine block, I decided against it. In the darkness, I could see the animal's head in the headlights of the various cars parked around the area, and make out the shadow of its antlers. Google "500lb elk" if you want an estimate of what it looked like.

PS It wasn't a dark desert highway, but I'd been to Standin' On The Corner Park in Winslow, Arizona that morning, so y'know. Eagles.

King Arthur - A Review

So baby Moses was pushed down the Thames before his father was killed by the Young Pope, who was cosplaying as Skeletor.
While the Young Pope was building the Tower of Orthanc, Moses changed his name to Arthur, grew up with the Artful Dodger, and took up MMA.
When the Sword of Omens finally reveals itself, Arthur pulls it from the stone and, after a trip to Dagobah, is able to use it to see the Matrix.
With the rest of the Flying Columns, he enters the Death Star and defeats the end of level boss in the Chamber of Secrets.
Also Littlefinger is there for some reason.
This all happens in Guy Ritchie's film - I'm not making any of it up.

TX-it

It's a sad day for alternative music fans in Dublin and Ireland today as champion of actual musical artist TXFM will fade to black for the last time tonight at 8pm

Like a lot of people I know, I've been listening in to their swansongs over the last few days, remembering where and when I was listening when X happened, the first time I heard Y played and when Z's song convnced me to pick up their new CD.

Rather than mourn the station's death, I'd like to remember the few occasions when I contributed to its life, both in its present and previous incarnations as Phantom FM.

I don't remember the first time I listened to Phantom FM, but I do remember the first time I heard, or rather saw, it. At Witnness one year, a guy in front of me at the bar in the premium section had written "Bring back Phantom" on his tshirt. I might have heard of it before that from friends, but this was definitely the first time the name entered my conscious mind 

My First CD

On 30th anniversary of the first CD being sold, the afternoon show was asking people for the memories of their first CD. I sent a text with my first CD, and they asked me to come on the air to discuss it, why I bought it and so on. I was 18 and had just bought my first PC for college, which came with a CD drive. I had browsed the small independent music shop in the shopping centre around the corner from my parents' house on innumberable occasions, and one cover had always caught my eye, so I knew it would be my first purchase to listen on my new (oversized and overpriced) music player. It was The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I still listen to it on my iPod, and I'm quite proud that it was my first CD.

Pub Juke Boxes

Some time late, on the morning show, pub juke boxes were being discussed. I sent a message to the presenters mentioning the juke box in Quinn's bar in Limerick, where I would meet my friends when we first started going out drinking. The story I had to tell, what made the particular juke box stand out in my memory, was that every week (without fail) somebody would queue up the entire Black album by Metallica, so as soon as you heard the opening bars to Enter Sandman, you knew what you were goign to be listening to for the next hour! The bar has long since closed, along with the majority of the shops on that block in Limerick, but the Limerick Post published a piece a little over a year ago walking through the abandoned bar: Quins of Limerick – the pub with no peer

Soundclub

The final time I contributed to TXFM was just this past Friday when, after pestering them with texts on a faily basis for a week, I was asked to contribute to the Soundclub slot in Cathal Funge's TXFM Breakfast show. Since the slot had started more than two years ago, I had thought long and hard about what track I would like to add, an act that was rarely if ever played on Irish radio, a track that meant something to me, and what I would say if I was asked. The track I chose was Everclear's So Much For The Afterglow, and while I thought I sounded nervous as I explained my choice, the feedback I got from the presemter, the station's social media channels, some other listeners and my friends convinced me to listen back to myself on their site's listenback service, and it's a lot better than I remember!


Thanks for allowing me to be part of it all guys, you were always one louder

Euro 2016: Lille-livered, or Jacking up my ego

The day after the Belgium game, and back in La Rochelle, and I felt better after having something to eat. While I'd spent more time in McNulty's, the Irish bar that organised the coaches to Bordeaux, I decided to try General Humbert's, the bar that had sponsored the YBIG team in the fans game on Friday, for the Munster SHC game between Limerick and Tipperary. The bar was showing the game, but I had a few hours to kill beforehand, so I took the tour of St Nicolas' Tower (the bigger of the two towers) in the harbour, and some of the breath taking views of the city it offered.

Watching Limerick struggle against Tipperary, despite having a one man advantage for the majority of the game, should have dragged me back down, but for some reason, chatting with the other Limerick fans in the bar, and sharing a few words with the Tipperary fans present brought me back to reality.

After a meal in the town centre, I returned to General Humbert's for the France's final group game, against Switzerland, to find a large crowd of French had gathered. This was the first time that I'd seen the people of La Rochelle come out to support their team, and it did make for a great atmosphere in the pub between the French and Irish supporters. Around 12 o'clock, I decided to head back to the hotel but, as I was leaving, I was stopped and asked "Are you the guy who runs the Irish Abroad site?". "err, yeah, that's me", I replied. It was Jack Tuite, a former Irish U19 international who followed my @irish_abroad account on twitter. We shared a few words, I asked him how he was getting on now and he said he enjoyed the updates, even if they can be a bit frequent on matchday! I've only been recognised once before for running the site, and it was a nice ego boost at a time when I had been feeling as low as I can remember about football just 24 hours earlier. So, I stayed in the bar for the mythical "just one more" and left a few hours later feeling much better about myself, the trip, and football in general.

The bartender in General Humbert's had been quite vocal reminding people that night that the train timetables had changed, and anyone leaving on Monday had to arrive to the station an hour earlier to get the coach to Nior, where a connecting train would take them on to Paris - the reverse journey that I had take to La Rochelle almost a week earlier. Since I was not leaving until Tuesday, I didn't know if this change would affect me, so I walked over to the station on Monday after lunch to confirm my departure time to find that the same change had been made to my train and I would need to arrive at ten, instead of eleven the following morning. In the context of some of the other changes I had endured to my travel plans, it wasn't the worst. Leaving the station, I was stopped by a French family who had just driven to the town for directions, only for me to explain that I was Irish, and had no idea where anything was! I had found myself in the same situation - asked for directions by a native - on previous trips to New York, Paris, and now La Rochelle!

I had seen some people going around La Rochelle on segways, and found that it was a service offered by a tour company in the city centre so, on arrival at their offices, was disappointed to find that they were closed Monday and Tuesday, which would be my last two days in the town. However, this meant that I had time to tour La Rochelle's large aquarium instead. If you ever do find your way to La Rochelle, I would definitely recommend the aquarium, it takes about two hours to see it all, with a wide variety of species on view - from clownfish to sharks to jellyfish swarms.

My last night in La Rochelle consisted of watching England struggle to break down Slovakia's 11 man defence while Wales beat Russia on a second screen in a restaurant on the seafront, and a last drink in General Humbert's while TVs buzzed in the background with discussions on the evening's games.

The journey from La Rochelle to Lille was uneventful, save for the earlier departure time. It probably worked in my favour as it mean that, on arrival in Paris, I had more time to get from Montparnasse station to the Gare du Nord. Shockingly, the TGV to Lille was scheduled to leave on time, and was the first of the three trains I had taken in my time in France where I was asked to produce a ticket. I settled into my seat, again with a film I'd been meaning to watch for some time on my tablet and waited to arrive at my destination.

When I had booked my trip in late Februrary/March, Lille had by far the most expensive quotes for hotel rooms, so I had instead decided to book my stay with AirBnB - the first time I had used the service. I had rented a one room apartment not far from the city centre in Lille, met the landlady at the address and left my bags in the room. In truth, it wasn't much to look at, but I was only there for two nights, and cost of the two nights was still cheaper than some of the hotel quotes I had seen for a single night, so what of it?

A friend had arrived in Lille the same day, so we made arrangements to meet up at a tabac (a small French store, selling beer, tobacco and lottery tickets) just off the main square. This allowed me some time to walk up to the fanzone and pick up a few souvenirs from my trip for friends and family. After meeting at the tabac, we encountered again some of the French disinterest in the tournament. Despite the square being full of Irish fans, not to mention some Italians, and a few other nationalities, the tabac had only one small screen in the corner of their window showing the Spain - Croatia game, and it was on mute. Not only this, the picture dropped for about ten minutes just before half time, much to the consternation of the two Spanish girls who were sitting behind us watching the game.

After the game finished, and with my friends leaving to catch the last metro to their hotel, I walked back to the apartment. There was a street party in full swing about two blocks from the apartment. At the top of the street, I was stopped by two French guys, who were looking to hang out with some Irish fans, and I happened to be the first one they had met. I chatted to them in my broken French, and learned they were from La Reunion, the home of French midfielder Dimitri Payet. I told them a good friend of mine is a big West Ham fan, and we're both big fans of the playmaker, so they insisted I try some of the drink they had with them. Normally, I would never accept something to drink in a plastic bottle from someone I had only just met, but the few beers I had in the tabac robbed me of any reluctance, and I swigged it back. I'm not sure what it was, but I can tell you it was orange, and could be used to strip paint from walls. Walking further down the the street, which had DJs with decks and speakers outside the bars dotted along it, I was again stopped - this time by a couple, a French girl, and a Polish guy. I speak a little (ok, very little) Polish, but I was able to tell him my name, and ask him his name in his native tongue. This impressed him enough to offer me a swig of whatever it was he was drinking. For the second time that night I drank something approximating engine cleaner given to me by a complete stranger.

Well oiled, I stopped into one of the bars to drink something that I had actually paid for, and had a good idea of what I was drinking. The place was packed, and I got talking to some Irish, and some French who were there. I didn't realise one of the French girls was deaf, I might have upset her a little. I did try to explain to the other people who were there that she was deaf, and I don't have any sign language. They didn't know her either, but did speak to her and assured me there was no problem.

I only vaguely remember leaving the bar, and waking up the next morning in the apartment realised I had done something I've not done in a long time. I had drank so much I blacked out. I had no recollection of getting from the bar to the apartment. This terrified me. It's bad enough doing it in Ireland, where at least you know where you are, how to get home and have friends around you to help you, but this was another country,  and in city where I could count the number of people I knew on the fingers of both hands.

With a hangover that knew my name, how was I going to recover in time to make it to the Italy game?

Euro 2016 - Bordeauxing On The Ridiculous, or The Dark Nightbus Of The Soul

Part 1: Travel Sickness, Part One or "when everything that can go wrong on a connecting flight does go wrong"
Part 2: Travel Sickness, Part Two or "when one train vanishes, another one turns into a bus" 

After a day or two in La Rochelle, I knew that something was different to the last tournament in Poland, and I couldn't put my finger on it. I knew before I arrived there would be less Irish than in Poznan, and more people from other countries, so that wasn't it. I knew the town was a small seaside town, and you could walk anywhere you needed to go, so the minimal number of taxis, indeed vehicles of any kind, on the road was likewise expected, and to be honest I welcomed the absence of perpetual drone of engines on the main streets.

Watching the England - Wales game with two friends in a restaurant it finally dawned on me, the French hadn't embraced the tournament in the same way the Polish had. The restaurant we were watching the game in had the game on a big screen. Which was muted. There was only one waiter in the restaurant taking orders and delivering food to tables, which I imagined was the norm for the place. I thought it strange that no extra staff were on duty to handle the extra visitors the tournament had brought to the town. Walking around the town and I saw the same scene repeated throughout - normal service continuing. Only 50% of the bars and restaurants were showing games, and about 50% of them were showing the game with the commentary muted! None of the establishments had seemed to have taken on extra staff, an the staff that were working were taking orders one at a time, filling the orders and returning for payment. To make matters worse, some of them were closing at 2pm for the afternoon! I wondered what the same situation would be like at home if we were granted an major international tournament. All bars and restaurants would have big screens, and would go to pains to advertise the live games shown within. Extra staff would be taken on to handle the increase in trade, and they would be experienced (or at the very least trained) to handle the same increase.

And so to play Belgium in Bordeaux on Saturday. Flying out from Ireland, I had no ticket, but a friend had a line on one and texted me the day before the game to confirm that the ticket was secured, but I would have to collect it in Bordeaux city centre on the day of the game with two others he'd managed to source tickets for. The Ireland fans group You Boys In Green (YBIG) had organised a fleet of coaches from La Rochelle on the day of the game to take the Irish population staying in the town to Bordeaux and back. Which meant more travelling. But nothing could go wrong this time, right? Right?

The coaches were scheduled to leave La Rochelle at 8:30, so I arrived at the car park near the town's aquarium at 8:15 with some other fans already there and no coaches. They did soon arrive, but the organiser wasn't happy. They should have been there at least a half hour earlier, and they were misnumbered. I don't know why this was a problem, but they needed to be renumbered which took longer than expected and we left at nine. I was on coach 10, or coach two if you like. The journey to Bordeaux was uneventful, and we arrived at the stadium shortly before midday. The stadium itself was new and reminded me of the office toy of a board with pins in it, so if you push something through on one side, the imprint of it is on the other side. The stadium is like someone had pushed a cone through that toy, and let some pins fall through.

The first problem of the day hit - the tickets were in the city centre, and I was at the stadium. The other two that were also collecting tickets were also at the stadium, and needed me because I had the address on my phone, whereas the phone they had stored the address on had died overnight, and when I asked why they didn't store it on the other phone, I was told "that's just thinking ahead". Whatever. There's a tram stop at the stadium that takes you into Bordeaux city centre in about twenty minutes. We had been told that the tickets were only available until 1pm and this was midday. At 12:20 we were outside the fanzone and started asking volunteers where the address was. However, none of them knew it. I had resolved not to use my data connection while roaming unless it was an emergency. And this was one. So, data enabled, google maps engaged and the address is about 20 minutes away. And it's 12:40. The clock is ticking. We collected their car that they had left near the fanzone and, guided by Google Maps, we embarked on one manic Italian Job-esque drive through Bordeaux's back streets that included several double backs and missed turn offs, as well as some choice four letter words on my part. We arrived at the collection point at 1:05. Fortunately the lady holding the tickets had sympathy for us and was happy to supply the tickets, despite being late.

With the tickets secured, we headed back to the stadium. At the stadium, we found something strange waiting for us. The coach that brought me to Bordeaux had parked in the coach parking area on the far side of a large car park, which unbeknownst to us was being kept empty. To estimate the size of the car park, it took me a little under 15 minutes to walk from the coach to the stadium. The traffic police directed us into the industrial estate around the stadium, and we parked on a grass verge, along with everyone else. Why was the car park being kept empty?

With tickets at a premium, there were several fans outside the stadium with "need a ticket, please help" signs. Were it not for my friend, and his friend, I would have been among their number.

Before the tournament, I had ordered a custom flag from Flagman Ireland of a tricolour bearing an image of Shane Long with the commentary of his goal against Germany from Marco Hagemann - "Shane Long...BAH!". The flag conformed to UEFA's standards - size, fireproof, etc. Unfortunately this was not acceptable to the security volunteer at the stadium. Despite my protests, the protests of the other fans in the queue, and the fact that I had the same flag in the Stade de France I wasn't permitted to bring it in. So I had to dump my flag in a bin. Another strike against France, and EURO 2016. The tickets were good, great in fact, and I was sitting next to Damien Duff! But I still missed my flag. It was mine, and it was taken from me. I've never liked losing anything, and having this taken from me, without my control was gnawing at him.

You know what happened in the game. Let's skip to after that. I knew it was hopeless, but I started opening some random bins around the stadium in case I might come across my flag again, but found only had bottles and cans. I came across some other Irish fans who had the same problem, and some Belgium fans who were in the same situation as us and were happy to translate with the volunteers, who couldn't help us anyway.

During the next 15 minutes I spent crossing the empty car park again, my thoughts turned to the group games in Poland. Three games, three losses. In France, two games, one draw, one loss. Was I doomed to never experience an Irish tournament win? I was in Bordeaux, which has an airport with flights to Ireland. Should I look for flights back and save myself the pain of the final game against Italy?

Arriving back to the coach, the next travel disaster was waiting for me. The driver's union had mandated that the drivers have nine hours rest between journeys. We had arrived at midday, and the game had ended at 5:50. By the time I'd gotten back to the coach, it was about 6:30. I was looking at more than two hours in an empty car park, along with the other Ireland fans who had filled the ten coaches. Only one was permitted to leave early, so we agreed to let the women and children head back first. With nothing else to do, and two hours to kill, I walked back across the car park to a McDonald's to get something bad for me to eat.

When the coach finally left, a fan from Derry was sitting beside me, and his friends behind us. While that in itself was no problem, the lad sitting behind me was leaning over the seat to talk to his friend, and kept hitting my head with his elbow. I told him to watch his elbows at least twice, before I finally lost my cool, and grabbed his arm and told him in no uncertain terms what would happen the next time he clipped the back of my head. That was an overreaction, and I apologised.

I crossed that car park four times that day. I spent approximately an hour walking across a car park. No wonder I was thinking about leaving.

Euro 2016 - Travel Sickness, Part Two or "when one train vanishes, another one turns into a bus"

Part One here: When everything that can go wrong on a connecting flight does go wrong

Apart from the game itself, the day of the Ireland-Sweden match was largely uneventful. I made my way to the Eiffel Tower to see the fanzone to find the tower itself only open to tourists, and that the fanzone was on the far side of the tower. With time a premium, I got something to eat at a nearby café, and spoke with some American tourists who weren't really sure what was going on, before meeting some friends and taking the metro to the game. On the metro itself, some light conversation with an Irish man and his Swedish wife resulted in them selling their spare ticket to one of our party who was traveling to the game without a ticket. Irish ladies international Stephanie Roche was two rows down from me at the game, and I got a photo with her after the final whistle, which gave me the strange experience of telling someone I'd never met before that she follows me on twitter!

A day later, and having endured Hercules' first labour in getting to Paris, I figured that the second leg of my journey, a train from Paris' Montparnasse station to la Rochelle (a small seaside town about a 90 minutes drive north of Bordeaux) would be uneventful. But not so.

I arrived about two hours early to the station, both to find the correct platform and to get something to eat. The SNCF had emailed me to let me know that, despite the ongoing strike action my booking was safe, and the train was scheduled to leave on time, which I confirmed on the departures board. The station's relative quiet was periodically broken by striking workers in hi-vis vests with a megaphone to let everyone in the station know their grievances. I got a seat in one of the station's cafés and ordered a sandwich. I got talking to two Irish fans at the table beside me, and sold one of them my spare ticket for the Italy game. A friend of his was due to arrive in France later that week and had no ticket, so after a quick phone call to confirm his interest, I sold him the extra.

With 20 minutes to leave, I wandered over to the platform where the train was still scheduled to leave, and browsed on the free wi-fi until another Ireland fan in the station tapped me on the shoulder, and asked if I was also getting this train to Bordeaux, because it had been taken off the board!

After checking the board to find that, yes, it had been removed, I went to the information desk and found with my broken French that I could take the next train to Bordeaux about an hour later, and get a connecting train at Nior, instead of Angoulême as in my original plans, with the same ticket. Ok, not the worst change of plans I'd had to endure, even at this early stage of my trip, but another inconvenience.

One thing that struck me as odd was that the lady at the information desk was reading this off a printout, not on the screen on the computer at her desk. Working in the realm of realtime information has made me suspicious of printouts for a variety of reasons. How old was the printout? How did she know if it was still valid? Why was France's much-vaunted TGV still reliant on paper?

But the train left on time, with me on it, and I settled into watching one of the films I had added to my tablet before leaving. We arrived in Nior two hours later and followed the signs for the connection to la Rochelle to find it wasn't a train, but two coaches! I got on the first coach, which filled quickly, as did the second, and noticed that several Irish fans had been left standing outside the station. While I was thankful I was not among their number, I did wonder how they would continue on their journey.

The coach wound its way through the French countryside until we arrived at the train station in la Rochelle about an hour later. We were all a little surprised that there were no taxis at the station, but soon they arrived in ones and twos to take the weary travellers to their various destinations. I would learn that my hotel was actually about a 10-15 minute walk away, but after three days of traveling, broken by the self-inflicted stress of an Ireland game, I was happy to get a taxi.

The hotel itself was centrally located, and its owner cheerful with perfect English, so after leaving my luggage in the room, I left for a walk around the city centre (what I would learn is the "old" part of the town) to get something to eat and have a quiet drink.

After another day's travel disrupted by forces outside my control, surely now my issues were at an end? Not at all.

To be continued...

Euro 2016 - Travel Sickness, Part One or "when everything that can go wrong on a connecting flight does go wrong"

I'm not long back from my second UEFA European Championships in France, and while there were some fantastic moments, the overall experience has left me feeling wanting as right from the very beginning, my travel plans were disrupted.

I arrived in Dublin airport on Saturday, 11th June in plenty of time for my flight to London's Heathrow, where a connecting flight would bring me back to Paris for the first time since 2009. However, the plane itself couldn't match my punctuality. A rare June afternoon fog meant the aircraft didn't leave until two hours after the scheduled time. These things happen to flights, and it meant I could watch the first test between Ireland and South Africa on the iPad of a player from the Dublin Rebels American Football team, who was sitting beside me. While we were still in the air, the pilot had told us that Heathrow was aware of the delay, and that the connecting flight would be held for us. However this was not the case as the gate was closed in front of us, despite a desk being opened for the Paris passengers. The plane itself was still in Heathrow, was still on the tarmac, and indeed had not complete boarding. The unfortunate official at the gate had to contend with about 20 stranded Ireland fans, with no idea who to speak to. To compound the issue, the flight had been booked with British Airways, but the flight itself was handled by Aer Lingus, so the BA official in front of us didn't have any information. The group decided to stay together, and try to get some answers.

Two hours later, after some false starts, and missteps, we found ourselves at the Aer Lingus desk dealing with a manager who didn't want to know about us, and had no inclination to help us either. Fortunately, one of our group was a manager in Dublin Airport, and was duly delegated to speak on our behalf, knowing full well the right questions to ask and exactly what the airline were bound by law to provide for us. An initial solution to take us by bus to Birmingham for a flight, with the possibility of a return to Heathrow should that fail placated the mob, but while we waited for said bus we were called back to the desk to find that the national airline had agreed to put us up in the hotel in Heathrow and supply us with room service if we would return when the desk opened at 5am the next morning. So, as the clocks approached midnight, we decamped to the hotel for the briefest of stays.

At five bells the next morning we reconvened in the lobby to return to the desk. I was at the head of the queue when the lady at the desk asked for a passport, to allow her to access the system. We were told that we would be dealt with in ones, and twos, so when she found a single seat on a 1:30 BA flight, I told her to book it for me. At 9am, there was little point in doing anything other than getting some breakfast back in the hotel, where we met some more travelers from our delayed flight, three girls on the trip of a lifetime to Bali. Which they missed. While we were facing a minor delay in our trip, they were facing rebooking flights to Indonesia, and being out of pocket for the longest part of their journey. Following breakfast, I returned to the departure lounge to wait for my gate to open, so I could check in and continue on to the city of lights.

One uncomfortable hour long snooze later, I woke to find that while the gate had opened, and I could check in, the flight itself had been delayed by a half hour. Considering what I had gone though, I could handle another delay, and I was pleased to see that the same Dublin airport manager that had argued so successfully on our behalf had also been placed on the same flight. Two more of the original group joined us in the boarding queue. They had been originally booked on to a later afternoon flight, but when checking in found that one had been booked under another name, and to compound the mistake the booking was in a woman's name, and the other had been booked on a flight that had left 24 hours earlier! Luckily two more seats on the same BA flight had gone unclaimed, so they had been added to the flight roster. When we were finally in the air, I noticed that, despite our group's need for seats, there were still three empty seats at the back of the plane.

The flight itself was uneventful, other than the delay, and I finally arrived in Paris 26 hours after arriving in Dublin Airport. I estimate that, assuming no delays, I could easily have made it to New Zealand in the same timeframe.

The three empty seats on the flight were made all the more galling when, at the Sweden game in the Stade de France on Monday evening, I found myself in the same row as two of the same group. They had been booked on to a late evening flight from Heathrow, but when arriving to check in, found no record of their booking, resulting in a chase across London to St Pancras station to purchase two Eurostar tickets to Paris at a cost of STG£180, and at their own expense, although there was an agreement in place with the airline to compensate them for the cost in due course.

So, with the start of my journey ended, I had assumed that I had paid my dues up front, and the karma banked with the universe would mean the rest of my travel plans would proceed as planned. Not so.

Part two is here: "when one train vanishes, another turns into a bus".

Done With Clickbait

I had an idea recently to write a script to rip the embedded content (tweets/facebook posts/instagram posts/etc) from the clickbait sites that have sprung up in Ireland over the last while (joe/sportsJoe/balls/etc) and publish it all elsewhere.

Been working on it on and off for a little while and you can see the results here: http://donewithclickbait.appspot.com/#/
Click on the headlines to expand and see what they have to used to justify an article. Might save you a few trips to these stites

There was a slight problem with the script for the last week where it wasn't updating for a few days, but I think I have it licked now

There's a few things left to do, the layout needs to be cleaned up for one thing, but it's more or less done. The site is updated a few times a day, and it all runs automatically from Google Scripts* The insults - "a waste of a journalism degree", "mouth breather", etc - are repeated so I need to think of a few more to make it seem less repetitive. Feel free to share the link to anyone you think would laugh at it.

I'm not the Irish Clickbait guy - https://twitter.com/IreClickbait - although you should follow him if you're on twitter. There is a twitter account for the site here - https://twitter.com/_stopclickbait_ - but I haven't done anything with it yet. Again, something to work on. Maybe tweet when the article is first linked by the site, and then a running total whenever they tweet again - "joe.ie wants you to click on new article", "joe.ie linked to this article for the second time today", etc -

I'm doing some data mining on the articles as well, for the few days the site's been running I can tell you an article link is tweeted five times on average by those sites, with balls posting the most articles per day, and joe posting the same link the most times

If there's enough interest I could have a look at doing something similar for clickbait sites based in the UK, but I'm not as familiar with them.

*read up here if you're interested: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/triggers/

Firefox not using history in Awesome Bar search

I've been using Mozilla Firefox as my development browser of choice for some time now, and recently the latest upgrade to v43.0 was applied. However, after the upgrade completed, I noticed that, when I typed in the first few letters of a website into the awesome bar, e.g. www.goo.. it wasn't retrieving relevant results from my browsing history.

A quick google search later revealed this was not an uncommon experience, even if it hadn't happened to me before. Some suggested solutions included

• installing the Places Maintenance add on
• verifying that the places.sqlite file is not read only
• deleting the places.sqlite file and starting fresh

But none of these worked for me.
On a whim I opened the configuration menu using the about:config advanced settings page and searched for "history", when I noticed that the "places.history.enabled" value was manually set to false. I don't remember making this change since the upgrade completed, and I had not experienced the issue in the previous version of Firefox, so I restored the default value - true - and restarted.

Fortunately, this change had resolved my problem, and I was able to continue my browsing experience as before!

Movember 2015

So, one month, and €105 raised in donations, later Movember is over for another year. This was my fifth time giving my time (and my upper lip!) up for the men's health foundation, and I very nearly didn't do it.
For some reason, there wasn't the same build up of excitement that was in previous years. Certainly there were less members of staff in the office where I work doing it, I'm actually pretty sure I was the only one doing it, whereas before there was upwards of 30 men all growing out their moustaches for charity.
With about a week to go in November, I got a large online donation from a friend. Larger than any other donation I had received until then, including a cash donation I had turned down for being too generous. I messaged them, and said it was too large.
What I didn't know was that their father had been diagnosed with cancer, but after surgery and recovery, was doing much better, and part of the donation was from him. So I'm glad I did Movember this year, and I'll be glad when I do it next year.
Take care of yourself.

Lenovo Laptop Function Keys Permanently Mapped To Alternative Use

This issue was rendering my lenovo laptop unusable, I couldn't use F5 to refresh in a browser, various applications that had the function keys mapped to functionality (search, replace, etc) were useless. Finally, on a lenovo forum I found the following: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/11e-Windows-E-and-Edge-series/Persistently-lock-function-keys/td-p/1358503 So the solution is to press the function key + ESC to reset the function keys to standard use. Panic over

I'm not having a drink, thanks

Since I was in college, I've had the habit of giving up alcohol for the month of January. At the time, it was because I had exams at the end of January, and it simply wasn't a good idea to imbibe while studying, especially coming after the Christmas/New Years period which, at the time, involved about 12 days of drinking for me. One particularly heavy year ended with me thinking I had low grade alcohol poisoning.
After finishing college, I kept the habit up, for similar reasons, after a massive amount of drinking over the fortnight, I needed a break from it to clear my system out after returning to work.
During the year, I also quit drinking for Lent. No alcohol, for 40 days and 40 nights. Again, this started in college (third year to be precise) and I kept the habit after graduating.
On more than one occasion I've thought I was drinking too much, and to me, quitting for these periods during the year meant that I was in control, not the bottle/pint glass/shot glass.
Guinness is usually my poison of choice, but I will occasionally have a Heineken. While I do enjoy a glass of whiskey or vodka, it's become rare for me to have one in the last few years, and there were only a handful of occasions when I did so in 2014.
On a normal week, outside of January or Lent, I rarely drink midweek. I drive to work, and there's a checkpoint on my route to work about two or three times a month. While I've never been stopped there (although I have been breathalysed on two other occasions) sod's law dictates that the one time I am stopped and checked will be the one time I have had a drink the night before. On an odd week over the year, I might have a drink on Friday night, but it's usually Saturday that I will go out to the pub, meet friends and drink. I rarely drink to excess, some of my friends will confess to have never seen me drunk, but often right up to my limit.
I convinced myself that this was responsible drinking, I wasn't going to drive the next morning, would have slept, eaten and recovered some way before getting behind the wheel again, and I have no responsibilities to anyone other than myself. For some reason, I rarely drink at home, be that in whatever house I was renting up until I bought my own place last year, the flat I bought, or my parents' house, it's almost always out in public. I never really understood why, but I've no inclination to drink at home.
With all that being said, over the last 18 months or so, there's been a few incidents where I was seriously concerned that the amount I do drink was having an adverse affect on myself. More than one Sunday has been described as a "write off", I've said and done things that I've regretted the next day, or whenever they've come back to me after the fog of liquor has lifted. As I get older, I've still felt rough some Mondays and even Tuesdays after a heavy night on Saturday.
So, as 2015 begins, I've resolved to stop drinking for a while. I'm not quitting, I will have a drink again before the year's end, but when my next drink will happen, I can't tell you. I've been to the Electric Picnic festival in August for the last two years, and I can see myself having a few drinks at that, but between then and now, if you want to buy me a drink, don't.
I'll worry about tomorrow when it comes, but for today, just for today, I'm not having a drink.
Thank you.

I've been tinderized

So 2104 was the first time I really tried online dating. In no particular order. the following is my experience of dating using the app. The names of the innocent have been omitted

• gorgeous, but felt like a sister than a romantic partner. Could have been fun but I know it wouldn't have lasted long
• lot of fun but in the end, just not my type
• one date, neither of us felt like it would go anywhere afterwards so we left it at that
• great girl, intelligent, sporty, little withdrawn. I had zero experience with women like this and it showed. she ended it after the second date. Really brought me down, still feel it could have been something
• loads in common but she ended it because we (and this is a direct quote) "don't challenge each other"
• longest term girlfriend I've had in a long time, really knocked me back when she ended it and it hit me harder than I'm willing to admit
• nice girl, easy to talk to but met me the same time I had a few dates with someone else, so she said she was happy to leave it at the one date we had
• lovely girl, got on well, unfortunately lives about 15,000 miles away so we met while she was home on a short holiday

One thing I've learned is timing can be the most important part of a relationship, especially at the beginning. If both of you are not in the same headspace, romantically, it can all fall apart really easy.
Also, sometimes it's ok to be a bit of a dick, as long as she knows it's not what you're really like!

Remember - eventually you will have your last first date

Things that were true about me on 1st January 2014 that are not true on 31st December 2014

I've never done a reading at a wedding
I don't have a sister in law
I don't own the place I live in
I've never been to a gig at Leopardstown
I've never been to an open air movie screening
I've never been to Glendalough
I've never dated someone I met online
I've never been to a Six Nations game with my father

WinAmp on Android whipping my phone's ass

While I've tried a few different music players on the various smartphones I've owned since first buying a HTC Desire HD, I've always returned to WinAmp - a player I've used on various PCs I've owned and used since first year in college.
However, recently it refused to open, and I had to trial other players, none of which I found as good.

Fortunately it seems my plight is not unique, and at least three other users on the winamp forum had the same issue, and it has a simple solution - enable Airplane mode, then open the WinAmp app, and disable lyrics mode, then resume playback!

Thanks Spriz and habumach on the WinAmp forums for this solution - http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?p=3009519

The morning after the championship before

In the aftermath of Ireland's second Six Nations win, my thoughts have turned to the World Cup in 2015. With the retirement of Brian O'Driscoll, the management are faced with the unenviable task of replacing Ireland's greatest ever player, and with a limited amount of games in which to do it before the World Cup kicks off. The forthcoming summer tour to Argentina will be the first opportunity to do so, but after a long season is not the best time to evaluate weary players.
This leaves us with the autumn internationals and the 2015 Six Nations championship to unearth a new thirteen. Is that enough gametime to adequately prepare for a World Cup?

While this season's championship has provided Brian O'Driscoll a far more fitting ending to his international career than the 2013 Lions tour, had he retired then we would already have identified this player, and he would be facing into the World Cup next year with two championships behind him, instead of one.

Although Schmidt's reign is still very much in its infancy, I have noticed one troubling statistic - his team score very few points in the second half of games against stronger opposition. Against Australia, Ireland only troubled the scoreboard with a single penalty after half time, against New Zealand we failed to register a single point in the second 40 minutes. Against England and France, we only scored 10 points after half time in both games, and only two tries. Indeed, the boys in green failed to register a score after the 55th minute in both games, while the opposition ran in 13 and 10 points, respectively.

While Jonathan Sexton finished the championship as top points scorer, the abiding memory of the final game against France was a missed conversion and penalty that, while not having an impact on the final score, brought back memories of the infamous missed penalty against the All Blacks in Aviva stadium in November which would have given Schmidt's side a win against the only team Ireland have yet to register a victory against in test rugby. These misses have again raised questions about his mettle in high pressure situations.

Compare that with England, who have a settled side, a victory over New Zealand in November, beat the Six Nations champions Ireland, and would have won the Grand Slam, were it not for a late try and conversion by the French. For these reasons, along with home advantage, I believe England are going to win the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

Car theft

You know, if I park my car in an area known for car damage and theft, and leave valuables in the passenger seat (say my mobile phone, CDs/DVDs or a tablet) then I have to accept part of the blame when my car is broken into and my valuables stolen.
When certain choices and actions are widely known to lead to a given conclusion in a large number of circumstances, then the owner of those choices and actions really should give time and effort into rethinking them.
Read into that what you will, I just don't want my car to be broken into.

KDE Dolphin - the process for the mtp protocol died suddenly

Suddenly started getting this error in Dolphin on my kubuntu 13.10 machine when connecting my Samsung Galaxy S3 - "the process for the mtp protocol died suddenly" A quick google gave this result - https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1242357 - with the same error message, however the solution to disable USB debugging did not work, as it was already disabled. However, disabling developer options completely solved the problem. The only issue now is - what do I do when I'm developing an app and want to deploy it to my phone?

Things that were true about me on 1st January 2013 that are not true on 31st December 2013

It's never been claimed that the Lord was speaking through me
I've never seen Bloc Party, Artic Monkey, FatBoy Slim or Vann Music live
I've never been to The George
I've never been to Wembley, or climbed The Monument
I've never tried to buy a house
I've never been to Electric Picnic
I've never done yoga
I've never been live on RTE television
I'm not certified as a MongoDB developer
I've never been to a rugby league game
I've never started a parody social media account
I've never been tackled by a security guard without a reason
I've never shared a taxi with a stranger