An unsettled week in footie land

MUCH happening in the world of footie this week?

Well, let’s see now. There’s Cork City in crisis. The Premier League kicking off. Pat’s bouncing back in Europe. Robbie misfiring in Belgium. Trap naming his squad for Oslo. Steve Finnan returning. Andy O’Brien not for returning. Stephen Ireland – yawn – still making up his mind. And – what was the other thing? — oh yeah, the small matter of a war in Georgia which, poor us, might affect Ireland’s opening game of the 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign.

Nothing out of the ordinary there, I think you’ll agree. So let’s do the traditional Irish thing and talk about the weather instead.

This day last week I was on a train from Cork — after watching City being turned over by Bohs at the Cross the previous night – when, about a half an hour out of Dublin, I got a phone call to tell me not to bother heading on out to Tolka Park where Shamrock Rovers’ were due to take on Sunderland – sorry, I mean Roy Keane’s Sunderland – in a friendly game that evening.

My on-the-spot informant painted a vivid picture of a deluge of such biblical proportions that he assured me the teams wouldn’t even be able to get down Richmond Road, never mind onto the pitch.

Looking out the window of the train, I could certainly see leaden skies and steady drizzle – all the trappings of a normal Irish summer’s day, in other words — but nothing to suggest that I might have to go into the ark-building business when I set foot back in Dublin.

But when the train pulled in, I learned that, like politics, all weather is local. Heuston Station might as well have been on the Onedin Line, packed to the gunwales as it was with the sodden hordes of Galway fans who’d waded in from Croke Park. The toilets resembled the dressing room at the end of a match, as men queued up to wring out their replica shirts in the sink and every few seconds the door opened to admit another poor spluttering wretch who looked like he’d just been plucked from the depths of the ocean.

Outside, the rain hammered down as if from the pen of the mighty Flann O’Brien himself. Hundreds massed under the cover of the main doorway, few daring to splash their way to the taxi rank. After a while, the rain eased considerably, and I was able to hop – the operative word – onto a Luas into town where I espied fans in Sunderland strips cavorting outside a pub as they revelled in conditions which, in their neck of the woods by the brutal North Sea, they probably consider a touch on the damp side.

Meanwhile, the reports were piling up about flash flooding, impassable roads, premises under water and the DART suspended because of a landslide at Malahide – north Dublin, it seemed, was being transformed into a waterworld. Would we ever see the like of it again? We would. The following Tuesday to be precise.

This time we were en route for Abbotstown and a press conference with Giovanni Trapattoni when the dark clouds returned. As the heavens exploded again, phone calls from journalists trapped in bumper to bumper traffic had the desired effect, and the presser was put back to allow for the late arrivals. Whatever else the Italian has brought with him to Ireland, it hasn’t been the weather.

But the elements weren’t done with us yet. After the main man had departed, presumably by hovercraft, we stayed on to tap out our deathly prose, to the persistent soundtrack of the rain on the roof rising in volume from deafening to disturbing.

That was when someone noticed that the wall at the back of the press conference room was wet and getting wetter – not for the first time, we observed, the FAI had sprung a leak. Ireland’s football authorities might not always love us, indeed they may not even like us a lot of the time, but even they baulked at the possibility, however remote, of Ireland’s football journalists being electrocuted en masse. Either that or they were worried about the carpet. In any event, the power was switched off and we were evacuated to another room to finish our vital work before heading out into the dark, drenched night, keeping a sharp eye out for locusts. After all, the FAI have already been threatened by fire and water...

So, away from the main headlines, that was the week that was. And if the forecast is anything to go by —what a crazy notion — the week to come as well.

So good luck to sporting Ireland and all who sail in her — whether they ever intended to or not.