I'd gone out and had a few the night before, nothing mad. Australia just doesn't close, which I've no problem with. Travelling to Townsville was a bit of a shocker though, the flight being delayed by seven hours. So we went to Burswood Hotel and Casino, and had some food. There was some hassle going into the casino because we weren't wearing the right stuff, but got in, had a few laughs and won a few quid.
Eventually got on the flight, feeling tired all day after just four hours sleep - and I'm one that needs my sleep. But I was beyond sleep by the time we got into Townsville at 1.30a.m., and another casino at least gave us something to do.
We trained pretty hard the next day, a couple of sessions, in a different climate and you could really feel the difference in the lungs.
Before you were sweating because you were training hard, here you were sweating because you were in the heat. First proper training session at centre. It was odd doing the analysis of the previous day. We were split up, defence was sevens and centres, while counter-attacks were wingers and full-backs. I had to go up to Graham and ask him which I was.
"Brian, you're a centre." "Am I? That's fine."
Queensland President's XV 6 Lions 83.
I hate being in the stand but watched the game with "Rog" (Ronan O'Gara). If I'm in a bad mood, I'll chat to him and even the way he speaks makes me laugh. You'd think that with a Cork mother I'd be used to it by now. We were abused by some drunk Aussies, and we played really poorly in the second quarter.
They were hurling it down at us, not at the team, literally for the whole first-half.
"You're having trouble with a President's 15, imagine the Wallabies you ****ing idiots." One thing was very funny. When Jason Robinson got hit they were screaming, "Robinson, go back to league, you're no good." And, later when Billy Whizz got five tries, we started shouting back: "Jase, go back to league." They'd piped down by that at stage.
One of them came up to Joan Moore - assistant to Lions manager Donal Lenihan - and apologised, then they came over and had a load of things for us to sign. I can take a bit of slagging but this was 'OTT'. All the lads walked away and I said I'm not going to sign this either, and explained to them why. To be fair, they apologised and we parted on good terms.
We went back to our hotel for some fantastic steak sandwiches and chips, which was rather nice. I'm easily satisfied.
The Buzz of "Brissy"
We were slap bang in the middle of Brisbane, which was good for a change. On the Thursday I went to the zoo with Scott Quinnell, Rob Howley, Dafydd James and Dave Rogers, the photographer and Rob, one of the cameramen. That was actually really enjoyable.
It was Steve Irwin's (the Crocodile Man) zoo and when I was in the States last year I was constantly watching him and fascinated by him. I love crocodiles and snakes, and I'm a bit of a Discovery Channel person. I could gawk at it for ages.
I hadn't been to the zoo in years. We were treated very well and got to hold some of the koala bears, and one of them shat on me, but they were like rabbit droppings - which is good luck apparently. They really grab on to you. You have to hold them close or otherwise they'll think you're a tree and start climbing up you. Apparently they're narky little fellas when they want to be. Cuddly toys with claws.
Then they brought out a four-metre python and I was thinking "ooh, I don't know about that". Daffyd James' facial expressions were so funny when he put the python around him for the photographer and the cameraman. He's genuinely scared of snakes, but he had to save face. The python weighed about 50 kilos and was awkward.
When I was trying to balance him I nearly grabbed his head at one point and they said "don't grab his head.
Okay, you're the bosses. I can't say I enjoyed it, but at least I can say I did it. It wasn't as slimey a feeling as I thought. At one stage I could feel him expanding around my neck, so I was kinda glad when it was over.
Went out for a meal that night in a shocking chinese restaurant. Absolutely terrible. Some of the boys left and I'm sure everyone went on and ate something else. I didn't want to go back to the hotel so I went with a few of the boys. Friday was a non-day until I met my girlfriend for the first time in two months. Suzanne's over here on a working holiday for a year. Danny Herbert gave me a call too. Told us to take it easy on them.
Queensland Reds 8 Lions 42
The first-half didn't go particularly well, I wasn't pleased at all. I sat in the changing-room at half-time and thought to myself "I really need something in this half to get my confidence up". Then a try came my way within three minutes and that's all I needed. My confidence was back.
Jonny Wilkinson made a great break and the offload was meant to go to Hendo, but next thing I found Jonny running through, suddenly the ball was in my hands and then there was no tackling from the full back.
It was just a tad better than the try I scored in the opening game against Western Australia from about a yard out. I'd like to think Jason Leonard couldn't score the second one as opposed to him being an expert at the first one.
It was a reasonably satisfying performance overall. As usual there was a lot of statistical analysis of the game afterwards and I was relatively pleased. There were a couple of passes I should have given which I only saw on the video. I never saw the one I should have given to Daffyd in the first-half while it was happening.
It's a move we use in Ireland but differently, where I'm the pivot man, and the winger does a different thing. I got a knock on the shoulder and they brought me off, to-be-sure-to-be-sure. Met up with Suzanne, some of her girlfriends and my friends.
Moved on to Manly in Syndey the next day. I went out surfing for the first time with Dan Luger, who fancies himself as a bit of surfer. I had very little success but it was quality time. I'll be doing that again.
It was nice to be in pleasant surroundings, just good humoured banter from the locals around us. Obviously a disappointing result, perhaps we under-estimated the opposition. That won't happen again. It's been a tough week, what with Dan and Catty going home and our first loss. SO a pick-me-up is essential at this point in the tour. No harm that it's against a lot of the same New South Wales players. Therefore no better way to get it back on track.
