What Recession?

YESTERDAY’s alcohol ban in central Bari, only lifted after last night’s match in the San Nicola Stadium, was about as futile and comical an exercise as one high-profile but uncapped League of Ireland player’s announcement of his retirement from international football a couple of seasons ago.

The estimated 6,000 plus Irish fans who clogged the arteries of the city on Tuesday night awoke yesterday with an Adriatic-sized hangover, hoarse throats and the realisation that a cure was not on the menu from our Italian hosts. But, as Groucho Marx famously stated, I don’t want to be a member of any club that will let me in anyway. Or, similarly, as one flag hanging in the Piazza yesterday explained: F**k the Recession, We’re on a Session. Indeed.

But there was plenty of beer to be bought from enterprising Italians on street corners, waiters were persuaded to wrap bottles of wine in tea towels while more hid cans behind upturned menus. And more still went to the beach.

Nell McCafferty once wrote about sleeping in the catacombs of Rome during Italia 90 where pasty, freckly Irish lads in O’Neill’s nicks and Saw Doctors t-shirts were bunking up, amazingly, with Scandinavian and Italian goddesses. Yesterday at the beach, the next tide of Celtic cubs were perched on white rocks like giant, green tortoises who are hard wired biologically to return to the same spot once in a lifetime to mate. There was certainly none of that. I, however, won an Italy jersey with a scratch card I procured for buying a bottle of beer. Result.

Speaking of results, it seemed to us last night’s was cast in stone. On Tuesday night a gypsy woman approached a group of al fresco imbibers outside a city centre cafe begging for cash. When she failed to extract any money she immediately gesticulated wildly and seemingly spat a few swears at us. Two Italian speakers in our company, however, explained that she had put a curse on Trap’s team and promised we’d lose 1-0.

The more superstitious amongst us jumped to their feet, rattled a few cents out of their pockets and offered it in exchange for a scoreless draw. It said a lot about the mood amongst the travelling support when no one even dared think mysticism would get us more than a point last night.

I’ve been here since Monday. I wake, stroke my now thick facial hair and just like Martin Sheen holed up in Saigon in the first scene of Apocalypse Now, think: Bari, I’m still in Bari. But many, many more arrived right up to yesterday afternoon using planes, trains and automobiles.

One group stumbled into the square at midnight on Tuesday when the party was in full swing. Entering, a civic space that was like the Cork hurlers’ homecoming in ‘66 with a generous dash of grappa, after a delayed flight from Rome one of their group told us of his travels around the south of Italy 19 years ago. He reminded me of the story of an old, sickly GAA club man who calls his son to his death bed and says: “Son I want you to know that I forgive those Rovers boys for the hiding they gave us in 1963 in the Junior B final... but don’t you ever forgive them.” He enjoyed his time but God, he was dying for a result last night.

The weather yesterday wasn’t conducive to a bucket and spades job on the beach and many of the bodies on show wouldn’t catch a wave in Youghal but needs must. This is where the action was — especially when the police confiscated the football that was kicked around in the main square when it was Garryowen-ed unceremoniously and hilariously onto the bonnet of their parked Paddywagon.

That was my cue to exit and was walking along the coastline looking for this famed Eldorado where — they whispered — you could still get Peroni, when in pulled a pimped-out SUV with two suave Italian lads with a Bryl Cream problem. In the back, hanging out the window was a lanky, bearded, middle-aged Dubliner in a flowing green, white and gold frock. He introduced himself as St Patrick, obviously. Forgetting everything I was ever taught about strange men in dresses offering lifts, we hopped in and to the famed beach. “Miracles happen when you believe in saints, lads,” he mumbled as he looked out, through his Ray Bans at the sudsy seascape, before taking a hearty pull of a Marlboro light. “Strange things happen,” he repeated.

Amen.

The touring congregation certainly needed religion and mysticism going into the San Nicola Stadium last night.