It was a hotel bar in Richmond. I was staying there with some friends. Munster were staying there too after playing a game on a Saturday afternoon or evening. I was shocked at the amount of blazers around the place that day. Absolute whopper cunts. At the time (pre the All Blacks win in Chicago which I attended) I was vehemently anti rugby. I had no respect for them. It must have been about 2001 maybe.
I left the hotel to go drinking in various pubs along the Thames. Came back late that evening and retired to the residents bar.
O’Gara was there with some blazers. Questioned why I was in the bar and I told them I was as entitled to be there as they were and basically rugby was a bit shit and no big deal really in the scheme of things. A tiny amount of countries played it and big red faced allackdoos followed it. Rehashed most of what goes on on the anti rugby thread albeit 16 years or so ago.
He grew angry enough and I kept going sensing victory.
mick Galway then walked over and put me over his shoulder, carried me out of the bar and told me to go to bed.
Which I did.
The next afternoon I went drinking again and ended up meeting a returning British soldier in full uniform who was as drunk as me and he pushed me down Richmond high street in a shopping trolley to The Orange Tree pub where I joined my friends standing on the bar singing American pie.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army undertakes its first operation in Great Britain, planting four car bombs in London; 10 members of PIRA are arrested at Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the country
