Well, Irish eyes are smiling, anyway

And so it came to pass that the Lucky Shirt came out once more in order to cheer England on to what now looked like an inevitable Grand Slam/Triple Crown. After the defeat of Wales had left them singing in the Shires and beating the Italians had romanced the stones in Rome it was the Irish who next came between England and their birthright.

TC had an invite to meet up with “Tom’s parents” in the west car park before the game for a tipple and munchies. Tom’s dad is a former Headmaster of Millfield School and current President of the English Schools Rugby Union (and one of the “57 old farts” Will Carling complained about), so the meeting in the Car Park was very Twickenham, with a glass of jolly nice Wine and lovely smoked-salmon sandwiches.

The less said about the match the better, probably. From St Jonny’s scuffed kick-off England didn’t really get in the game until the second half, and then didn’t quite have the gumption to be able to win it. Oh and the bar staff at half-time were totally unprepared for an onslaught of Guinness hunting thirsty Irish (and a few english) men.

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

After the match it took 90 minutes to just get out of the car park, mainly due to the obstructing efforts of taxis arriving to collect the corporate fat-cats from their corporate hostility boxes. A couple of traffic coppers taking numbers would have helped out considerably.

Eventually we arrived back at TC’s where Tom himself was waiting, and the Furnster cooked dinner.

Oh well, the cricket season begins in about a month’s time.