Fairy Tales are made of this

Its been a funny old weekend for the Irish sporting fraternity, they lose the Six Nations championship, through indiscipline in the dying minutes of the game against Italy, aided and abetted by Scotland donating a try to France, again the dying minutes of their game - and then just as Irish spirits were about to be cast down, along comes their cricket team who proceed to absolutely stuff the Pakistan team, and then proceed to have the biggest Paddies day celebration on the beach in the west Indies - another piece of sporting history is in the making.

Now for those of you who think Ireland has no place in cricket might I suggest that pay a visit to

http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/article_cricket_renaissance_irish_society.htm
where you discover an Irish take on the game of cricket, and its place in Irish society, likewise the web site of Clontarf Cricket club

http://www.clontarfcricket.com/

Now for those you who do not have a great knowledge of cricket, far less this one day thing, and have no idea what a silly mid something or another means I publish below a pictorial guide to the position names and where they exist on the field of play

Just to complete this sporting note, Wales (as I forecast) beat England, thereby saving Wales from holding the wooden spoon, and permitting the Village Welsh Person S.... to have something to celebrate - and Scotland are once again left holding up the the championship.

The Irish contingent, apart from young J....(an Irish treasure) all left these shores to watch the game from the comfort of there own homeland, and whilst they shed a few tears at loosing the championship - it was with much glee (and pure amazement) that took from the victory in the West Indies.

For my part I saw none of these sporting events, but a little friend tells me certain village members did indeed manage to watch ALL of the rugby matches, and at the same time became just a little inebriated. Now I do not think I should name these individuals, suffice to say it included one Australian, one Irishman and one Englishman, (all with the christian name intial of J....) as after this marathon consumption - they then proceeded to De Lacy's to take in the Irish music and dancers, all provided by our wee man J.....(Irish with penchant for loose fitting jeans). It must have been a sight to see, as the dancers were positioned outside the toilets with the musicians by the window. I am told that not to many cretins were in attendance, probably due to the fact that entrance cost Ls3.00 !

Now on Friday evening as is our custom we retired to our weekend haunt, only to find it had been invaded by drunken cretins originating from Liverpool. Now normally it takes the cretins a few days before they discover our little sanctuary, but in this case we have an informer in our midst. Young F.... ( Australian hosteler of note) - had apparently informed them of our location and the benefits therein, and had his sidekick take them ! - So please F...., by all means show them the sights of Riga, a service for which you are renowned - but please, please let us have Friday night in relative peace, and take the cretins to another establishment. Fortunately the cretins were escorted away by their guide, such that we could still enjoy a drink and chat in peace. The reason being they were going to invade another establishment at 8.00pm - God help that place.

Now for the regulars amongst you, who will remember we celebrated J.... (English with Welsh tendencies) birthday last week - so below you find a selection of pictures from the evening.

and finally a picture which once again proves that age does not beget sense

Well now that Six Nations Championship is over I can now reveal who won, But first of all, know that no one got 100% right - in fact the best results managed with only three wrong, so as there were a number of persons who managed to get only three wrong, the final outcome was decided on tries scored, so in the time honoured tradition of announcing in reverse order, the result are ( everybody holding their breath !!).

The following was received from S.... (Welsh keeper of the results) this morning ..

4th place with 3 incorrect results but with only 29 tries.........David Sim

3rd spot with 3 incorrect results and a guess of 77 tries.........J O'Neill

Runner-up with 3 incorrect results and a guess of 75 tries..........Brendan Finnegan

The winner with 3 incorrect results and a guess of 60 tries........Andrew Lewis (my son)

There were in fact 64 tries scored.

No one else had less than 4 wrong, although my accountant and best friend (soon to be ex) claimed he got only two wrong with his verbal entries after each round....I told him to F.... off!!!!!!!!

For those who wish to conduct an audit all sheets submitted are available either electronically or on paper. Hope no one thinks I cheated? (Comment - as if we would think of such a thing, nothing at all suspicious about the organiser's son winning - is there ?)

The booby prize without doubt should go to C.....(English who got 7 results wrong and guessed 150 tries would be scored! mmmmmmmmmmmm!

Also special reference to Alan Schofield who only forecasted the results of 12 games and managed to get 6 of them wrong!

So a novel little challenge over with, World Cup next.