Saturday 25th November 2000

Michelle: "TOOOOOO EAAAARRRLY!!!!! and various blasphemy  rang around the house as myself, Ben and Christina set off at silly o' clock to Luton airport for the 7am flight. At least we were going to make darn sure we weren't going to miss it! The master plan was to meet Marieke at the check-in, but Christina and I had an urge to explore the Duty Free and do the girly shopping bit, so we left Ben to do his manly boy things and cleared off through to the "other side". Chris gave way to the temptation of a new watch, then we met with M and B at the boarding gate. The yawning competitions began . . .

On the plane, Ben ended up in an aisle on his own and promptly fell asleep for the whole of the flight, a fact he subsequently tried to deny! Christina managed to keep me awake by digging her nails into my left arm during take-off, a few turbulent patches and landing . . . so most of the flight really!! But finally - and at last after a week of thinking we would never make it - the sweet smell of Irish rain hit our noses and we stumbled off the plane to wait in the airport for Justin to arrive. The remedy of a lardy breakfast seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

By 9.00am the coffee was finally kicking in and we thought it was about time to investigate how the other team members were faring. "Ring, ring . . . MOOORNING ALL!!" met with a very rough sounding Martin Reed with unintelligible words which finally deciphered to mean something along the lines of "bugger off, we're trying to sleep". Passing the phone round our table so that everyone could cheerily greet him did nothing to lighten his mood and convince him of our theory that as we were up so should they be, so we took the hint, feeling somewhat smuggity that we were without hangovers.

The master plan was for us to stand at the arrivals gate to meet Justin, and for Chris, Marieke and myself to run up screaming and asking for autographs, fainting with sheer overwhelmed joy at his feet. Luckily for him - or us - he had managed to sneak in early, so sadly that opportunity was missed!  Executive decisions were made to dump bags at the Guinness Pool then hit the bright lights and big city of Dublin. Chris's most excellent map-reading navigated us to the nearest bus stop before a three-day hike started around the Guinness factory to find the legendary pool! With bags eventually dumped, a wander to Temple Bar and girly shopping ensued. The boys were offered the chance of sitting in a comfortable pub but chose instead to be dragged around various gift and clothes shoppies. A valiant effort at the New Age Guy bit . . .

Having been up for 8 hours, munchies then called, and the gods of comfort found us two HUUUGGE sofas in Phoenix Perk Cafe where matching HUUUGGE pieces of cake and coffee were downed, interspersed with snoozing. Even the Alien got to enjoy a bit of pie, so to speak."

"Chilling in the Phoenix Perk cafe after hot chocolate & marshmallows and chocolate galaxy"

"Meesh being camera-shy . . . but unable to resist the cake!"

Marieke: "Did you know that chocolate is an aphrodisiac? So we should all be very much turned on now!"

A faceful of pie: can life get any better than this?

Err, yeah, OK, 'nuff said . . .

Alien: "As the honorary chosen-one team mascot, I felt duty-bound to experience the full Dublin extravaganza and accompanied my hosts on their journey to find the mystic portal. I finally found as close to Nirvana as ever experienced when I was allowed to share the Galaxy Chocolate Pie."

Jamie: "Jamie "Colin McRae" Phillips and Russell "Richard Burns" Charlton recounted their previous day's exploits to the rest of the Fridays arrivals, who had obviously had a good night out judging by the groans and semi-conscious looks."

Carol: "Having now been re-joined by Jamie "Nigel Mansell" Phillips, Russell, Matt & Karl from Bournemouth we introduced them to breakfast at our greasy diner (the free-with-the-room coffee and toast still held no appeal). We then dispersed in different directions to shop and explore, agreeing to meet back at the hostel in an hour."

Jamie: "The looks and appearances of the group improved after the badly needed greasy breakfast; unfortunately the "short" walk/hike to the pool probably negated the effect, but served as a good warm up for the tournament ahead!"

Michelle: "At that point, the thought of freezing cold water and pain seemed a foolish thing to trade. How much would we be missed??!! However, duty called and a first inkling of anticipation shivered through us as we trekked back to the pool to meet the others and catch up on all their adventures before the start of the tourney. Dublin 2000 here we come!!"

Carol: "Having had an uneventful morning, we set off for the quick walk to the pool . . . not! "It's just over the river", Martin said. I should have remembered his instructions for finding my fellow team-mates at Dublin Airport . . .

We eventually found the pool and the rest of our missing team-mates half way through the Captains' meeting.

The pool? The less said the better! Unfortunately, unlike the English - and also apparently the Irish - we have wonderful, level, not-too-shallow-and-not-too-deep pools in SA. The first jump into hip-depth shallow water almost dislocated my knees. Likewise I almost drowned in the deep end. I was amazed when Julie told me there are deeper pools than the Dublin one that are regularly used for UW Hockey tournaments. My regular pools are Pietermaritzburg and Durban - a few of you may remember the '96 World Champs and various Interclubs there - no comparison.

In the first half  I managed to severely bash a finger, stop a puck with my face & almost drown in the deep end. However, despite the rocky start, I did enjoy the experience & would definitely take part again if given the opportunity. My team-mates played well and we won't mention the eventual score, but Helen did take a sympathy puck to her face so that I wouldn't be alone in the black eye stakes."

Jamie: "The tournament was a good experience, although the depth of the pool caught us off guard. Even having played in Putney's dive pit and ventured into the deep end of the Bournemouth version of the Dublin pool was not enough preparation for the harsh realities of the day. Still, we enjoyed ourselves (apart from certain matches that soured Justin's mood) and put in a good fight.

An honourable mention has to be made for Matt, for being the only player of the whole tournament to put a goal past the Putney defence - well done Matt! But despite our best efforts, the pool claimed another team. Oh well, next year should be better, eh Martin?"

Michelle: "The Dublin boyz then came to the rescue of some tired and hungry players by offering lifts to the party venue. Not content with travelling in limos, the quest turned into a competition of "stuff as many people as possible into one van and drive extremely fast round corners, pausing occasionally to see if anyone is still breathing!". I think we came out with a resounding gold medal, as at least 18 people with kit bags piled out at the hostel en-route to the do."

Carol: "Once the serious reason for being in Dublin was over, we once again geared up for party mode (Err, I think we need to synchronise definitions of the word 'serious' here, Carol). From the pool we all crammed into a van, bent a few road traffic laws (like Hugh - the local! - going the wrong way down a one-way street and having to reverse frantically as three lanes of traffic came hurtling towards him!) and headed for the party at the Teachers Club. What can I say, the Guinness was good, company great, blah, blah, . . . fishpaste!! (South African for 'etc')"

Michelle: "Hugh and his good lady provided a slap-up food fest, which disappeared in nanoseconds once descended on by hockey vultures. The 'to die for' desserts almost turned to reality for Martin R as Christina shovelled cheesecake into his mouth, to be followed in similar nanoseconds by a panic-stricken look and - out of an open mouth - "hi haherhic hoo heem!" A small pause followed by "Yer what??" from a baffled crowd. "HI HAHERHIC HOO HEEM!" with arms now flapping and pointing fervently to his mouth.

Finally it clicked that Martin was in fact allergic to cream and was more than a tad worried that what had been shovelled into his mouth was an (actually non-existent) fresh-cream topping to the cheesecake. After we had stopped falling about and realised the potential seriousness of his plea, we were able to reassure him that no fresh cream had entered any orifices. Not that night, anyhow."

The Captains: L-R: Hugh (Dublin A), Martin (Chesham A), Ian (Putney), Gareth (Newcastle), John (Dublin B). Missing: Russell (Chesham B), Tim (Edinburgh)
	The Team: (L-R, back-front): Marieke, Karl, Michelle, Russell Matt, Carol, Martin R Justin, Christina, Julie Eryl, Martin F Helen « and Alien

Carol: "By the time our feet had got just toooo itchy for a bop, it was too late to head up to the respectable bars (especially as some of us had trainers on), so we found a basement bar just around the corner from the hostel. They played great jute ("music" in SA slang) and seemed to cater for all tastes. The clientele provided some interesting viewing too.

Once the bar shut we headed off for Burger King and the obligatory munchie-snack, although we almost lost Ben en-route to the waves on the surfer-highway (a.k.a. a loose paving stone)."

Michelle: "By this point Ben was providing extreme value for money in the entertainment stakes. The loose paving stone in question dipped alarmingly about 6 inches when trodden on and gave the impression of potential disappearance into the land of Narnia.

Matt, Ben, Martin R, Karl & Russell paving-slab surfing

With the slab having almost captured him on his first encounter of it, Ben thought it so amusing that he decided that EVERYONE ought to have a go and promptly starting to accost passers-by to come and try out the fairground ride. Manic laughter and hysterics ensued when innocent strangers inadvertently found the trap, together with cries and sighs of sadness if they skirted around the outside. This, along with wild staring eyes and mutterings about German booby traps, must have made a curious piece of entertainment for the locals too.

At one point later on we thought we might be in danger of losing Ben to the Gardaí (Irish police), as he was intent on investigating a disturbance involving two policemen breaking up a street-corner duffing-up of one local by two others. The spectacle of Ben being carted off for a night in the cells would have made for entertaining reading at a later date, but was deemed to be not QUITE worth it at the time, so we dragged him away by his ears in the other direction."

Martin R: "By 3am even in Central London Burger King would have been shut for many hours. Not so in Dublin. Burger King, and indeed the whole of O'Connell Street, was as kicking as it might have been during the day. And Ben continued to provide top-value entertainment . . ." Notable quote from an Irish bloke behind Martin R in queue in Burger King: "Move that hippy out of the way".

		Carol: "We then returned to the hostel for Cointreau, losing team-members left, right and centre to the lure of their beds. But don't despair: Martin R, Matt, Karl, Russell and myself (the young ones) put a hefty dent on the Cointreau to the tune of some increasingly groanable jokes, before retiring at 4:30am. The 3am curse had finally been cracked."
		Matt, Martin R, Russell and Karl: "Sláinte!"