“My own heroes are the dreamers, those men and women who tried to make the world a better place than when they found it, whether in small ways or great ones. Some succeeded, some failed, most had mixed results... but it is the effort that’s heroic, as I see it. Win or lose.”
George R.R. Martin
“The egg chasers will be happy this weekend.”
With that pithy sentence the Derry News Editor perfectly summed up his feeling towards that great banquet of rugby that began on Friday night – the Rugby World Cup.
He’s not a fan, apparently. He’s also wrong. Rugby is a brilliant sport, and a young Warrior’s Code was seduced by it at an early age.
Rugby is the only sport my father truly loved, and rarely was he so animated than when the old 5 Nations were on TV, and the likes of Moss Keane or Ginger McLoughlin were charging forward with the ball up their jerseys. Those rugby colossuses of days gone by were my father’s heroes; O’Driscoll and O’Connell would be his heroes now. My own hero would be someone else.
As much as Tommy Doherty loved the dulcet tones of Bill McLaren on TV, he’d much prefer the old road trips he’d partake in to the hallowed ground of Lansdowne Road to see a game in the flesh.
My father used to regale us with stories of himself and a crowd of Glack wans and their great rugby odysseys to Dublin. As legend would have it there would be a dozen men, few of them with any real interest in rugby, squashed into my Da’s oul Ford Cortina, smoking and drinking the whole way to Dublin and back.
Tommy’s motor would just be parked outside Landsdowne Road with the hazard lights on, as the Glack men poured out of the Cortina and into the ground with maybe two tickets between them.
The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree, and sure enough the Warrior’s Code has been making the very same road trip for the last twenty years, and while the cast list of reprobates in the car has changed down through the years the craic has always been ninety. The old Cortina has long since gone too, unfortunately.
John Killen, of Campsie farming stock, and Alan Golligher – half man, half oil can, were the main stay of my the early rugby excursions to the Free State. I’d played a bit of rugby with these two hunks at Limavady, and although we had come from different schools and different parts of the country we soon bonded and became firm friends.
Road Trip!
Every year we’d pick a match that suited, preferably one that we thought Ireland wouldn’t get slaughtered in. John would drive - he was the fastest. A farmer, John Killen wasn’t happy unless he was up with the crows at 5am, and lifting the boys an hour later. But like a caged tiger, I was always standing at the front door with all the essentials - rugby shirt, six pack of Steiger and a fresh pair of nags.
The journey would pass by in the blink of an eye amid some serious rugby chat and nervous laughter. And seventeen pee stops. You’d check to make sure you hadn’t forgotten your ticket at Omagh, Aughnacloy. And again at Castleblayney.
Hotel accommodation in the nation’s capital would be cheap and cheerful - the type of place you’d have to wipe your feet on the way out.
By the time we made our way to the old Lansdowne Road, Dublin was awash with green, and everybody had a pint of stout in their hands, even the Garda. We’d always time our arrival at our seats just in time for the national anthem, which, with the two boys being proud Protestants was always an awkward oul two minutes. I’m fairly sure the pair of them had their fingers crossed behind their backs during the rendition of Amhrán Na bhFiann, if not humming The Sash instead.
Beware the Ballygowan bottle
No sooner would the game have kicked off than the weekend would take a serious turn for the worse/better (delete where appropriate) when Alan produced the dreaded ‘Ballygowan bottle.’
Now Golly’s infamous Ballygowan bottle looked like any other1.5L bottle of water, but with one very important difference - it contained poteen from the famous Golligher poteen distillery. And what’s worse, big Golly doesn’t take no for an answer.
The first couple of sups are the hardest, and Golly’s encouraging words “you’re too wee!” doesn’t help the medicine go down any easier. Not happy with ensuring his friends are royally wrote off, Golly insists that everybody in the row in front and behind us, usually unsuspecting French fans, ‘enjoys’ a tipple too. By half-time we’re all arm in arm, drunk as skunks and belting out La Marseilliese.
No one ever remembers who won the game, as we stagger from the stadium with the alluring scent of economy burgers in our nostrils. Now, Warrior’s Code is an easy going kind guy but the one thing he does insist upon in these rugby trips is the annual visit to the Porterhouse in Templebar.
The Porterhouse brews its own beer, and the jewel in its alcoholic crown is the ‘Oyster stout.’ We’ve spent manys a long evening in the Porterhouse down the years, supping Oyster pints, telling tales and enjoying the craic. It’s a little piece of heaven on earth for me.
Stories of the annual rugby trip has spread far and near and the annual pilgrimage to the now Aviva Stadium has become very popular. My father and my brothers wouldn’t miss it now, and neither would another man – big Mark Patterson off the wireless. Big Patterson is a rugby nut. Loves the sport. If he’s not harassing Brian O’Driscoll on Twitter about why there aren’t more Ulster men in the Ireland team, he’s organising over 35 games on Boxing Day for veterans who should know better. He also loves his stout. I firmly believe those two big legs of his are hollow, he can put that much of it away over a rugby weekend.
And if George Hook impressions are your thing, then the Patterson and my brother Simon are the men whose company you really need to be in. We wore Hook masks to one game a few years ago and were treated like kings.
Tommy enjoys a good Grisham
My father Tommy prefers to room with me because I’m the ‘sensible’ son. In the land of the blind, I suppose the one-eyed man is king. Outside of rugby, Tommy is a big John Grisham man. I’ll never forget the night I staggered into the hotel bedroom full drunk at stupid o’clock and fell straight into my bed. My father, despite a bellyful of stout himself, insisted on keeping the reading light on as he wanted to savour one last chapter of Grisham before lights out.
I couldn’t sleep in the bright room so we started bickering like a pair of oul weemin. I finally had enough and was getting up to switch his lamp off when there he was sat up in his bed with the reading glasses on and his Grisham book in his hands – upside down!
“Da, you reading your book upside down.” “Well, it was making perfect sense to me” came Tommy’s response as the pair of us laughed like schoolboys.
When I think of all the men that now make the annual trip down, my father enjoys it the most. Sometimes I look over at him in the pub or in the stadium and the smile is never far from his face. And the whole way home he talks about the trip next year.
He’s still my hero.
Read THE WARRIOR'S CODE in the Derry News every Monday, for the craic.