I’ve honestly never felt this bad before. It’s only half-time. But my legs feel like literally tree trunks and I’m breathing like someone who’s just about to die in a soap opera.
And, at the same time, I’m taking some serious sledging from the Newbridge College players.
“Sure weren’t your teeth worn away to stumps with all the bragging yee did?” Pad Mór, their full-back, goes to me as we’re walking off the pitch.
“Yee were going to bait us this way and that! But now you may forget it for a story – for tis as true in Fairyhouse as it is in The Curragh, that even the noblest horse can’t run well forever! Yahoo!”
God, I hate Kildare.
Goys, I know we haven't played well as a team, but we're still within a score of winning this!
The score, by the way, is 9-3 to them. And let’s just say the match itself is not a good advertisement for rugby – certainly not for people in their late-30s playing it.
I walk back to the dressing and most of our goys look like they’ve been pulled from the sea after their ship went down. A lot of them are just sitting there, staring into space, traumatised.
Others are doubled-over, quite literally vomiting.
We’re still in the match. I try to tell the goys that. But all of our weaknesses have been ruthlessly exposed in the first 40 minutes and I really don’t know how much more rugby I can get out of Oisinn (gout), Fionn (sciatica), Christian (age-related vision impairment) and even me (the drugs my son gave me aren’t working).
I’m like, “Goys, I know we haven’t played well as a team, but we’re still within a score of winning this!”
"Their pack is too strong!" Oisinn goes. And it's true, our forwards are getting seriously beaten up out there. "We're being punished for the soft, white-collar lives we've led since we left school."
I try to rouse them by singing the school song, but they're all too tired to join in, and I end up abandoning it just after the line about Castlerock Boys needing their Lebensraum.
There's something about the use of the L word that goys like us find – I want to say – <em>triggering?</em>
Half-time passes in what seems like only a minute. Then there’s a knock on the dressingroom door and we’re told that it’s time. Then we re-emerge from the dressing room looking like White Walkers.
I spot Ronan in the crowd and I sidle over to him. I’m like, “What’s the story with those drugs you gave me?”
He goes, “Thee were Halibodinge, Rosser.”
“Are you trying to say Haliborange?”
“That’s reet. Vithamins A, C and D.”
“What the fock, Ro?”
He goes, “Rosser, nuttin is life is woort habbon udless you eern it hodestly.”
Sometimes I wonder is he an O’Carroll-Kelly at all?
I'm there, "Yeah, no, that's not what I was raised to believe."
"Rosser, you nebber needed thrugs to be good at rubby."
“Well, I do now! Look at the state of me!”
“Membor what Fadder Fehily used to say? You doatunt hab to the sthrongest in rubby – just the smeertest,” and he gives me a wink.
I spend the first five minutes of the second half thinking about what my son said. And, very quickly, a plan begins to form in my – I suppose – mind?
I stort sledging the Newbridge players – focusing my taunts on their forwards. I’m like, “Come on, goys, we’re stronger than them!”
Our momentum is unstoppable. And seconds later, Oisinn crashes over the line and grounds the ball
And Micil Óg, one of their second rows, goes, “Have you a jorum taken? Oh, I’m sure tis wondrous music yee Dublin lads could make with the coins in yeer pockets – but tis plain for all to see that the hardship of working the land has made finer men of us! And a bed in heaven to all who’ve witnessed it here this day!”
But I keep it up, throughout a second half that remains, bizorrely, scoreless? We're out on our feet, but we're playing an ugly, spoiling game that manages to frustrate Newbridge and keep them to the nine points they scored in the first half.
As a matter of fact, we manage to make such a poor match of it that a lot of their fans stort drifting away, returning home to tend to their animals.
But then, with three minutes to go, it finally happens.
Oisinn has the ball in his hands and I go, “That’s it, Oisinn. Just run through them. They’re soft.”
And Livinus MacSomething, their loosehead, goes, “Bad cess to you and your foolish chatter! You’ll not be running through anything this day! And yee only a pack of ould ladyboys!”
And that ends up being the moment.
I don't know what passes for a ladyboy in Co Kildare. I know in Limerick it's any man who sits down to do a number two. But there's something about the use of the L word that goys like us find – I want to say – triggering?
And suddenly Oisinn, who couldn’t carry the ball more than two metres a minute ago, has his head down and he’s lumbering forward like coal lorry on a slight hill with the handbrake off.
And our players – suddenly maddened by the use of that word – form a maul around him. And they stort moving, like I said, slowly at first, but then gathering pace, as the Newbridge players come running from all directions to try to hold us back, shouting, "Saint Patrick, save us!" and, "The Curse of Moone on their heathen souls!"
But it’s no good. And they know it. Our momentum is unstoppable. And seconds later, Oisinn crashes over the line and grounds the ball.
All hell breaks loose. There’s hugging. There’s high-fiving. There’s chest-bumping.
But it’s all premature, because we’re still one point behind with the conversion to come, a fact that Pad Mór is keen to remind me of when he goes, “Tis a hard kick for a man with half your years! And when you miss it – yerrah! – I’ll love it like the smell of meat roasting!”
Christian throws me the ball and I put it in the cup. The angle is horrible. It’s close to the touchline and my concentration isn’t helped by two or three of the Newbridge players using their Leinster Schools Senior Cup medals to reflect the sun into my eyes. I take four steps backwards, then three to the side.
I rub my hand through my hair and I look up at the posts.
And, well, you don’t need me to tell you what happens next.
