We're in the weights room of David Lloyd Riverview – we're talking me and my squad of 22 – putting in a pretty intense session, with me shouting some of Father Fehily's famous motivational quotes at them, like, "Hord work beats talent when talent doesn't work hord!" and, "Always remember – it's the legs that feed the wolf!"
You can see them throwing the extra weights on the bor or increasing their speed on the rowing machine every time I hit them with a new gem.
I'd be genuinely stunned if this whole thing doesn't finish with me being added to the Leinster coaching ticket.
When the session is over, we head to Kielys of Donnybrook for a team meeting. I insist they run all the way there – the long way around as well, along Clonskeagh Road, then right down Eglinton Road, with me driving alongside them in the Lambo, shouting shit out the window at them, like, “Pain is temporary – shame is for always!”
On which subject, Sorcha suddenly rings. She hasn't spoken to me in the five days since she found out that the phone call she thought she received from Nelson Mandela in 2001 was actually me and Oisinn's idea of an April Fools Day joke.
I answer going, “Hey, Babes!” except there’s no greeting from her end.
She just goes, “My Mom and Dad have invited us for one o’clock on Christmas Day.”
I’m there, “Is that dinner thing still on?”
“Why wouldn’t it still be on?”
“I just thought, you know, that Mandela slash Mandinka business went down like a wet dog at a white wedding. The last thing they’re going to want to see on Christmas Day is my big, ugly face!”
I say ugly in, like, a jokey way?
“They want to see their daughter,” she goes, “and their granddaughter. You – as dad said – are just an unfortunate appurtenance they have to tolerate for the day.”
Then she hangs up.
I think to myself, no, I can’t go to Sorcha’s old pair’s gaff if this is what Christmas Day is going to be like. Sorcha and her old dear giving me hostility and her old man insulting me in a thousand ways I’m too stupid understand.
No, I suddenly realise, I have to get out of it, which means I’m going to need a pretty good excuse not to be there.
The goys arrive in Kielys and I tell them they can have whatever they want from the bor. This is, like, a running joke. No matter what they ask for – a Jagerbomb, a pint of Ken, a vodka Mortini with a twist – the staff in K Town give them a Diet Coke. That's on, like, my instructions?
"Okay," I go, "gather around, everyone. I know you're all keen to find out who we're going to be playing in the first round of the Vinnie Murray Cup. Well, the draw was made about an hour or two ago and we've ended up with – okay, there's no way of sugar-coating this for you, so I'm going to just it say it out . . . St Patrick's Classical School Navan. "
I say it really slowly, filling every word with a certain dread, basically trying to make them sound like the All Blacks.
But the players just look at each other, confused. Matthias Baker-Scott – who I’ve decided is going to be my number eight – goes, “That sounds very much like a GAA school to me.”
Then Oengus Bradach – scrumhalf – goes, “Isn’t that where your man Hector went to school? And Tommy Tiernan?”
Eugene Cowser – kicker – goes, "I love Tommy Tiernan. And, hey, weren't they in school with Dylan Moran as well?"
They’re suddenly all laughing and exchanging their favourite Tommy Tiernan and Dylan Moran lines and I end up having to bring the team meeting to order by shouting, “They’re going to beat us!”
That brings them to their all of a sudden senses. There’s, like, total silence. Eugene is the first one to go, “What?”
“Oh, you heard me right,” I go. “They’re going to beat us. And the reason they’re going to beat us is pretty simple. They’re better than us.”
They all look at each other, genuinely stunned. Most of these dudes have come to the Institute of Education from the likes of Blackrock, Clongowes, Mary's, Michael's and Terenure. They're not used to being told that anyone is better than them. On the first day of school, they were given the same message that we were given at Castlerock: "Look out that window. That thing out there is called the focking world. And it's yours, by the way."
But now I have their attention.
Eugene’s like, “What do you mean they’re better than us? In what way are they better?” and I can actually see his shoulders hordening.
“Dude,” I go, “it would be easy for me to stand here and crack jokes about Meath. I could tell you there’s only seven surnames in the entire county and in 1965 they elected an Irish Moiled Cow called Eithne to the Dáil because they thought she’d be sound on the agricultural question. But I’m not going to do any of that. Because my spies tell me St Patrick’s Classical School Navan have an unbelievably good team.”
Matthias, again, goes, “What makes you think they’re better than us?” He’s annoyed. They all are.
I’m there, “In a word – their desire. They’re working horder than we are, which is why, for us, this match is going to be about keeping the scoreline respectable,” and then I let that hang there for a few seconds before I go, “They’re even training on Christmas Day.”
Eugene shouts, "We'll train on Christmas Day!"
All the others are like, “Yeah!”
I’m like, “No way. Christmas Day is a day for family. It’s precious and blah, blah, blah.”
Eugene points at me and goes, “You’re training us on Christmas Day, even if we have to knock on your door and drag you out of your gaff.”
“Excellent,” I go. “Pick me up at about quarter-to-one, will you?”