Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Well, the witching hour is upon us in the build up to the Reading Half Marathon, resulting in a far more subdued Pat's day than in previous years. Needed to do my 'final' run tonight - a cheeky wee 8km - so avoided being the token Irishman down the pub at lunchtime and hot-footed it home.

Afterwards, I settled down to watch the Ulster Rugby Schools Cup final, shown live on BBC2 NI and accessible to me via the wonders of satellite telly and the magic in particular of Sky Plus (the game having taken place this afternoon). My old school - as I repeatedly referred to them, my old team - were in the final this year, having seen off the favourites in an epic semi-final.

Nothing prepared me for the match though - easily the most open, exciting game I have seen in a long, long time. I would have simply put it down to the copious amounts of red wine that were guzzled during the game, but having woken my mum from her slumbers to discuss the match at the final whistle, she agreed without prompting that it was more exciting than Ireland's Grand Slam game against Wales last year. High praise indeed.

It's very hard to reconcile the boys I saw playing their guts out on TV today with the team I was lucky enough to be part of way back in 1995-96 (when most of today's crop were around 3 years old). They looked almost professional in the way they played the game. I now have new sporting heroes - heroes who are 14 years younger than me. Callum Patterson, Caleb Morrison, Charlie Simpson, George Dennison - these guys make me want to go out and try to play the game again, so what they will hopefully do for the kids at my old school is anyone's guess.

And to top it all, in a bizarre twist that will mean very little to most of you, "Ballymena Academy" was trending on Twitter for a short time today.

Well done to all involved with the team - best St Paddy's Day for ages!

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