“Shut that Sex Shop Door”

Craic On Tour
By Billy Hamilton
December 7 2004

Now I am sure that if a player had not played for some time, for whatever reason, there would be a period of readjustment. He would not be thrown into the deep end of senior competition without a settling-in period in less stressful conditions.

So if this is the case for players why should supporters be treated any differently? Why should they not have training periods leading up to important games? This brings me to the salutary tale of one of our intrepid Pau tourists.

To save his embarrassment let us call him B. Now he had not been on a serious tour since Toulouse 2002. So the tour started badly when he decided to have a few pints of Marsden’s Pedigree at 8 am at Stansted. A few more drinks on the plane, a Rose lunch, a good dinner and a Tourist Reunion at the Black Bear showed up his lack of training. He almost missed the game. He certainly was unfit for further après match participation.

On the Saturday morning B mentioned that he thought it strange that none of the LI management had been seen on the Friday evening. “But sure you were sitting drinking with Keiron McCarthy” was the response. Then when B rang his wife on Saturday he was about to apologise for not having telephoned on Friday. But before he had a chance to do so, in response to another remark, she said, “You told me that last night” - Oops!!!

I have to admit, dear reader, that I was that soldier. Before I come on tour again I will have to get into serious training.

The Craic tour started for some on Thursday but the main body arrived on Friday. The Stansted – Pau plane was about two thirds full of LI, the team also travelling out on that flight. A quick dumping of bags in hotels led to a chance to explore the town and grab lunch. The Boulevard des Pyrenees became the destination for most of the arrivals. Now the weather in Pau over the weekend was bad so Boulevard sans Pyrenees might have been a better description. We were not to see the mountains at all during our stay. An allegation was even made, by a certain small female Dubliner, who shall remain nameless, that my report of the 2002 tour was erroneous and that we had not seen the mountains at all. How dare you question my journalistic credentials?

Friday night, for seven others and me, began with a relaxed gourmet meal in Chez Olive. No matter how gentile a meal is, three different wines at dinner followed by Armagnac should be the end of a nice evening not the beginning of a marathon drinking session.

Friday night was the main reunion in the Black Bear a large establishment with a cosmopolitan clientele. It was very nice to see all the usual suspects, meet ones who have only been known by their logins and a lot of completely new friends. The rest of the evening, apparently, was enjoyable but not very much was remembered the next day.

On Saturday morning the effects of the previous evening were quite apparent. I hope that one tourist will not be greeted this Sunday by a threatened chant of “Where’s your dentures gone……..?”. A party went on an organised tour of Lourdes but I regret that I had to decline the offer of a souvenir bottle of holy water.

Saturday afternoon saw the preparations for the evening in full swing. Annette and Claire scoured Pau for suitable materials buying one shop out of green glitter for example. Then by 5pm a fleet of taxis began to take the Irish supporters to the Stade du Hameau. This is a typical French municipal stadium with two large stands at both sides and open at the ends with standing on grass banks. As the local soccer side uses it, the spectators are restrained behind wire netting much to the disgust of the local rugby fans.

The locals were quite amused by our appearance. Green wigs with fairy lights therein, gypsy skirts, face paint, green glow sticks etc were the order of the day. My abiding memory is of Richard with his pink furry rabbit ears. The locals seemed bemused that, in a lot of cases, LI jerseys, coats etc were capped by Section Paloise berets.

The crowd is estimated at between 5,000-6,000 in a 15,000 capacity stadium. Of those I estimate that we had over 200 people. Now I will give the explanation for part of the title. The main chant of the home crowd is “Section (clap, clap, clap), Section etc” (it sounds better in a French accent). One of the wags in our party responded with a chant of “Sex Shop” which amused the opposing supporters. So throughout the game their chants were quickly answered with “Sex Shop”.

I think we easily won the noise battle. Similarly to my 2002 report the locals only really seemed to get animated over refereeing decisions, the opposition taking a kick and, for some inexplicable reason, our physios coming on to the pitch. I do not intend to cover any more of the game which has admirably been done by RFB.

After the game the majority of our supporters took the coach back into town. Now I am Irish and there may not be many famous Irish philosophers but even I could see that something was amiss here. The bus fare was 50 cents, which is around 30p, but the driver took an age to collect the money, issue a ticket and assure that it had been correctly validated in the machine. As someone said he would have collected more for less effort if he had passed the hat round. Eventually we were on the road and our mobile sing a long eventually reached town where it was transferred to the Black Bear.

Here we come to the other element of the title. The bulk of our party was situated close to the rather wide front door of the Black Bear. It was soon apparent that if anyone forgot to close the door, or even to delay doing so, the icy cold Pyrenean air came rushing in. (I know we couldn’t see them but they were there, believe me). So the as anyone came in there was a collective cry of “SHUT THAT DOOR!!!” After a while this was shouted even before they came in and even at innocent people just passing by. (It may not seem that funny in print but believe me it was).

Perhaps one disappointment on the evening was that the players did not join us, as is usual, at the pub. The management came but they did not. Perhaps having fans staying in your hotel takes a bit of the novelty off joining them socially.

So the fans eventually found their beds on Sunday morning. Although some took around 4 hours to make a 15-minute journey, being tempted by other hostelries along the route. Even after getting to bed their troubles may not have been over. One fan spent around an hour trying to get the bedroom lights off before discovering that the 14 discarded glow sticks lying on the dressing table caused the green glow.

So on Sunday morning it was really the end of another successful Craic Tour. Most of the party left on Sunday but there were a number of hardy souls still around. Around twenty of us enjoyed another leisurely lunch. We felt quite proud of drinking the restaurant out of Rose wine but felt deflated when we were told that it was only the less expensive one. There were lots of dearer bottles still to be drunk. There was also the challenge of the 1952 Armagnac at 46 Euros a throw. This remained unfinished unlike the more recent ones at 11 Euros each nip.

So Monday saw the last of the tourists leaving France and looking forward to the return leg next Sunday. We are still of the opinion that you definitely get a better class of Tour in the European Cup rather than the Heineken Cup. Can we accept the sponsorship money next year but play in the lower competition? On a personal note can I thank everyone for making me so welcome again and I am already trying to plan my next Craic tour.