Michelles London Life

International Rules game - insanity

Got back from the weekend in Dublin. It was great, two days of Irish sports and Irish drinking.

After we arrived on Saturday and got settled in to our room, we immediately went down to the pub to watch the Australia vs Wales game. We had an Aussie amongst us, she insisted. It was ok though, we were looking for an excuse to start drinking at 1o’clock in the afternoon anyway! The Aussies only managed a draw (hah!), but we were in an Australian pub, so lot’s of Kiwi and Aussie accents flying about – and there was a huge group of Welsh guys on a stag do, so the atmosphere was really good, very entertaining.

That night we went Clare (my Irish friend) took us out to this awesome Bar called Zanzibar – we stayed there till about midnight before moving on to a nightclub called Spirit. Clare had called them a few days earlier and sweet talked them into putting our names on the guest list. It pays to know the locals! When we got there we found out that they had also made us VIP’s! We were escorted in by our own concierge who took our coats. We didn’t have to pay as much as everyone else and we were allowed to use the elevator and go into the private VIP balcony. It was all very exciting, but having VIP access isn’t that amazing really, there were no famous people up there that I could recognise. Spirit had three levels, the basement was a chill out zone full of couches etc and the next two levels were dance floors playing different music.

On Sunday after a sleep in we got up and had an enormous lunch before heading off to the International Rules game – the reason we went to Dublin.

Have you ever seen International rules? Its craziness, those people are insane. The Gaelic team are actually playing a different game to the Australian team… for example the Irish team aren’t allowed to run with the ball for more then three steps before passing it on – but the Aussies can run from one end of the field to the other with it if they want to. There are heaps of weird rules like that. They have to have six referees just to keep up with what’s going on! It was hilarious, there were fights breaking out all over the place, before the game even started there were three fights going on at the same time – I thought it was a joke! There are three different goal posts – one that looks like a soccer net, and two sets of rugby posts, different points are scored depending on which ones you get the ball through. The Australians quickly took the lead and stayed ahead the whole game to eventually win. I was supporting the Irish team with Clare, and Ange, the other Kiwi amongst us was supporting the Aussie team with Beck.

Here's us in the stands, Beck, me, Clare & Ange:




Ange and I left the game 10 minutes early to hoof it to the nearest pub to watch the All Blacks play England. Which they did very well, naturally. It was so funny watching the crowd shots, the stands were entirely filled out in people wearing black. There must have been only a few hundred England supporters there. I wish I could have been there, but the tickets sold out within minutes of going on sale, which is why I went to Dublin instead.

It’s the most amount of sports I’ve ever watched in any one go.

On an unrelated matter; here is a link to the site where I’ve been posting all my photos. I’ve finally managed to get the Ibiza ones up there for you.

http://michelleinlondon.spaces.live.com/

posted by ... @ 3:29 AM