Putting manners on city slickers

SPLAT! When you dive on your first ball in any rugby match you don’t generally expect to come up smeared with sheep droppings.

But this was away to Charleville in the Munster Junior Cup, a competition I had last played in 12 years previously, and it was the bizarre beginning to one of the most bizarre 80 minutes, sorry 100 minutes, of my rugby life.

Quite simply, it is a different type of rugby, a totally different game from the one we were used to and we bottled it.