Early in Sunday morning, some time before five.
I had planned to stay up and watch the match live but having spent Saturday out and about in some above freezing albeit still cold sunshine, I succumbed to sleep all too easily.
Sanae had made me promise to wait and watch the match with her, but at five in the morning with both my mind and heart and racing, I couldn't stay lying in bed.
The uncertainty and the need to know, for better or, as I feared, for worse, drove me out of the bed, and silently I padded up the stairs.
I had recorded the match. Now, the terrible temptation in doing this is to cheat, turn on the computer and know the result in seconds rather than two agonizing hours later.
However, I had done this last November when Ireland played the All-Blacks and I had expected them to be fed to the sheep the kiwis had brought with them (for player 'recreation' purposes. Allegedly). And then I saw the score, read the match report and cursed my facile impetuousness.
But against France, in Paris, for the Six Nations' Championship.
I'll be honest dear reader, I gave it some serious thought.
But instead, I plugged the headphones into the side of the TV (Cian was asleep in the next room), sat down, fast forwarded through the anthems and "peep"! - we're off.
2 minutes in and we're three points down.
14 minutes and we're six points down. This is not good. I pull the computer closer and open the screen.
22 minutes and we score a try, so I close the screen. Sexton, measuring his preparation in aeons, misses the conversion so I open the screen again.
And so it went for the first half and into the second as scores were exchanged and I lurched wildly from elation to despair. Wildly but silently as both Cian and Sanae were still asleep.
And thus we arrive with the score at 20-22 in Ireland's favour and 15 minutes to go.
15 long, epochally long, minutes that twisted my soul, shredded my nerves, hammered my heart and left me vowing to check the internet first from now on.
78 minutes and that big lumbering French lad takes the ball out right, passes it to Chouly who dives over the line.
Sob...
But wait, even through my anguished, gasping tears, I can see that the pass was forward. Yes, forward, as forward as Nicola S. was at my Debs night back in the autumn of '87. God, if the nuns at Colaiste Bride only knew what their pupils were capable of...
The referee Steve 'Look at me' Walsh goes to the TMO. The TMO appears to be myopic as he looks again and again at what is clearly a passe avant.
And still we wait.
The TMO is wearing glasses. I reckon he should go down to Specsavers and demand his money back as they have clearly done nothing for his vision.
And still we wait.
And as they replay the pass for the umpteenth time, I explode.
"For f**k's sake ref, how f**king far forward does the ball have to f**king be"!!!
Cian comes bolting out of his room, "What Daddy?!" and Sanae comes up the stairs, "Is there something wrong?"
By this stage I can't speak and flap vaguely at the screen where the score still reads 20-22 with 78 minutes on the clock. Cian sits down on my lap to either watch Ireland record a historic victory or his Daddy suffer a heart attack while Sanae goes off in search of a defibrillator.
But even Steve, pretty boy Steve has had enough of Mr. Magoo's squinting and dithering and finally declares it a forward pass.
I don't cheer so much as utter a strangled "Yeaarghhh".
2 minutes to go. Time seems to slow down and collapse upon itself akin to the dying Irish scrum. I'm sure we are going to give away a penalty and that will be the last thing I ever see as my heart gives out and I depart this cruel, cruel world...
But no, there is a choke tackle, a thing of magnificent beauty, of grace and splendour, what Yeat's, no doubt with Paul Connell and the Irish backrow in mind, called "Beautiful Lofty Things". And the ref blows the final whistle and all I can do is emit an exhausted whimper.
And then I go and lie down for a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment