A Roundabout End to Euro Campaign

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Irish Voice Sport

A Roundabout End to Euro Campaign

November 15, 2007

By Cathal Dervan

IT’S the glamour of the job that keeps us in it. On Tuesday morning, at a time when most sane people were turning over in their beds for the second half of their nightly slumber, members of the Irish football media were dragging themselves away from the duvet.

Just a few hours later, after a walk through the wonderful odyssey that is the modern Dublin Airport and via the cow shed that acts as a Ryanair departure lounge, we landed in Bristol.

Now a friend of mine reckons Bristol Airport is a great choice of a European hub if you want to get from Dublin to the likes of Bordeaux, Toulouse or even my beloved Portugal.

His theory is based on the fact that you can walk out one door, the arrivals door, and in another, the departures door, within 60 seconds.

To more sane people, like me, that merely suggests that the airport in question is really small. And my suspicions were duly proven on arrival on Tuesday. Small but badly signposted, so badly signposted that it took us two tours of the long term car park to find the car rental desks.

Next problem? We had booked a car with Hertz via their central reservations desk in Dublin, but that didn’t mean a car was guaranteed upon our arrival.

We’d have to wait until four in the afternoon for the car we had ordered, or pay an extra £75 a day to upgrade to a bloody big Volvo estate. Customer relations my rear!

Eventually the good people at National sorted out a car and we exited the hub -– sorry, airport — in search of the motorway to Wales via the Severn Bridge that separates the principality from its oldest English enemies.

The Severn Bridge is a wonderful piece of architecture that transverses, funnily enough, the river Severn. It is also a toll bridge which is grand if you live in England or Wales and have ready access to sterling.

Not so grand if you’re come from euro land and forget to take the sterling out of the drawer at the side of your bed that morning.

A mile from the bridge we met a big sign. Cash only, no cards it read. A swift u-turn ensued followed by a 20 mile round trip down to the road to a retail park where we found a cash point and a McDonalds for a swift nibble.

Back down the motorway, across the Bridge and suddenly we were looking for a place called Cumbran, home to the Irish team ahead of Saturday’s final Euro qualifier against Wales in the Millennium Stadium.

Now Cumbran is not the most attractive of towns. It boasts no fewer than 14 roundabouts, and the Wikipedia guide to the place calls it the “home of the roundabout.” I kid you not.

The description is appropriate. And on every roundabout leading to the stadium that is Ireland’s current training ground there’s an artist’s impression of an athlete running –- next to a sheep. At first glance the athlete is running away from the sheep, whose image is next to that of a wine vat and an ancient Roman cart.

We found it funny that the athlete was running away from the sheep and not vice versa until we got to the roundabout beside the Cumbran FC Stadium where the athlete was abandoned by the sheep, who was now pointing in the direction of the town center.

You just don’t get this sort of excitement covering the GAA!

Inside the ground all was well. Almost.

Caretaker boss Don Givens was busy putting the players through their paces. The players who had turned up, that was.

On Sunday his phone was ominously quiet after a weekend of Premier League action. When we arrived on Tuesday the likes of Richard Dunne, Andy O’Brien (for a nose operation apparently), Stephen Kelly, Ian Harte and Kevin Foley had all withdrawn their services for the Wales game, while a doubt remained over Shay Given’s fitness.

And Stephen Ireland, otherwise known as Superman, had yet to make a phone call asking to be re-united with his Irish teammates.

By the time you read this we’ll have been over and back on that Severn Bridge like a yo-yo. And we’ll have procured enough sterling to keep the man in the toll booth happy.

Eventually, sometime around 3 p.m. on Saturday local time, we’ll get to watch a football match between Ireland and Wales, and all the effort and all the hassle will have been worthwhile, even if it doesn’t seem that way at the moment.

Now where’s that McDonalds gone?

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