I have a vivid memory of a Five Nations game in 1998, when I, aged only 13, watched Denis Hickie going in for an intercept try against France in Paris. As far as I can remember, we were ahead for much of the game, and eventually lost with a late try. I was transfixed by the game, despite not really having a clue what was going on. It was the same as the soccer team- brave performances against better teams, but ultimately, nothing to show for it.

Ireland had received the wooden spoon on several occasions during the 90s, and were generally seen as a national embarrassment, despite boasting tough, grizzled players like Wood, Clohessy, Galwey, Foley, etc... Two years later, we lost by a record score in Twickenham. Immediately, Gatland rang the changes, and over the following matches, young players like O'Gara, Stringer, Horgan, O'Driscoll and Murphy were introduced to go with the seasoned veterans, and we actually started winning the odd game. However, despite a general improvement, near-misses like Paris '98 were all-too-familiar. Scotland in '01, England and Australia in '03, France in '05 and '07... Of course, then there were the repeated trips to New Zealand and Australia, which often yielded great performances ('06 springs to mind) but, in the end, narrow defeats.

It looked like the same old story with 79 minutes on the clock on Saturday, but thankfully, fate intervened, the ball dropped short, and finally, the long wait was over.

For some reason, I found myself thinking about two-and-a-half years earlier... different house, same estate, sitting in my room, by myself, holding the rabbit-ears TV aerial on an 18-inch telly, trying desperately to get reception for the Ireland-Cyprus match. After watching 70 fuzzy minutes, Ireland conceded a fifth goal, and I smashed my coffee-mug off the wall.

Going from those dark days, to being surrounded by a room-full of good friends, roaring my head off with joy, a 37-inch telly, a fuckload of drink, and an Irish victory in a major international championship... it just sums up what its like to be an Irish sports fan. Years of misery, disillusionment and dashed hopes, yet some days, we defy conventional logic and go and do something absolutely fucking unbelievable.

Happy days indeed.

I don't like it when people get into the habit of saying 'Fact' after making a statement. Because usually, the statement is actually opinion, rather than fact.

I don't like text speak. Linguistically, Irish people are lazy enough, in that almost all of us are monolingual. Giving us further shortcuts is only asking for trouble. The proliferation of 'txt spk' in Irish people is serving to confuse young people about spelling, grammar and punctuation, and is going to render everybody dyslexic within a generation. IMHO.

The bin in my house has a certain capacity, which is rarely taken into account when said refuse container is being stocked. The seeming inability of anyone in the house besides myself to refresh the bin makes it particularly irksome. Whenever I take the bin-bag outside of its holding, it usually spills over. However, the overspill of bin-juice sometimes gives the effect of making the floor look cleaner.

Someone stole my tin of sardines. FACT.

Aldi mushy peas = green ooze with no discernible texture, nor trace of nutritional value. FACT. (See, it's really annoying, isn't it?)

Music in the last decade was absolute rubbish. Can anyone name a band that 'defined' the noughties culturally in the same way that The Beatles, Stones, Led Zep, Sex Pistols, Thin Lizzy, (early) U2, Nirvana or even Oasis defined their generations? Who's going to provide the soundtrack for 'Reeling in the years', 2000-2009? Fuck me, it'll probably be Kings of Leon. Kings of Leon are like REM or Counting Crows in that, they're not particularly awful, but neither are they particularly inspiring. If they were a football team, they would be Portsmouth.

I want to take a shit in an Ugg-boot.

I hate it when you spend ages planning a seventeenth-century battle, and the 'mountain' turns out to be a damp, lowlying area. Damn cartographers.

I was going to post something along these lines last week, but Eamonn Sweeney in the Sunday Indo said it better than I ever could. - Greg

'What in the name of God is wrong with those ludramauns who booed Ireland off the field at half-time on Wednesday night?

For a start, the idea of booing your own team is something which, like the Anglo Irish Bank bail-out, the enduring popularity of Eastenders and the security policy of the Israeli government, just makes no sense to me. I have stood and watched many miserable performances by various teams I support yet at no time did it cross my mind to abuse them.

If you feel the urge to boo your own team, surely the best thing is to go home. The people sitting near you will feel better, the players won't miss you and you might even feel better yourself. Anything would be better than revealing in public the fact that you are a bitter little bollocks unable to observe the most rudimentary rule of following sport, which is that you support your team rather than deride it.

I have a strange feeling that those who abused the team last week might defend themselves by saying something along the lines of, "I paid good money to go in and look at that game. I'll boo if I want to." But the sad truth is that the Man Who Paid Good Money For This is one of the curses of modern Ireland.

Who's that abusing the night porter at half one in the hotel lobby because he can't get another late drink? It's The Man Who Paid Good Money For This Room. Who's that complaining about the service at the end of his business lunch in the hope he might get a waitress the sack? Yep, it's the Man Who Paid Good Money For This Meal. He's also the man abusing the teacher at the parent-teacher meeting and hounding the overworked nurse in the hospital corridor on the grounds that, "I pay your wages, so I do." As a member of Amnesty International, I shouldn't condone torture but, speaking in a personal capacity, I would like to see The Man Who Paid Good Money For This hung upside-down over a slurry pit in which Mundy is playing a concert. He could have that one for free.

No manifestation of this blight on society is so obnoxious as the version which fancies itself as a sports fan. Yet perceived financial strain is no excuse for behaving like a pig. If you can't afford the ticket, you shouldn't buy it. Perhaps the heroes of Wednesday night would claim they were driven to boo by the fervency of their support. To which I can only reply that anyone who uses passion as an excuse for booing his own team is like the man who claims that he beats his children out of love.

Aside from the sheer bad manners involved, the other black mark against Wednesday's booing was that it was completely illogical. Subsequent to conceding a freakish goal after 46 seconds, Ireland worked very hard to get back into the game and were unlucky to be denied a goal by Keith Andrews and a penalty for a foul on Kevin Doyle. The performance had been a long way off disgraceful yet off they went, once more, to a chorus of boos. Why?

Perhaps the explanation is that there are certain inaccurate cliches of Irish life which get around and are parroted by the less thoughtful of our citizens. For example, to listen to people going on about boy racers and car accidents you'd think there was never a more dangerous time to be on the road in Ireland. The truth is that the 279 deaths on Irish roads last year was the lowest total ever, comparing rather well, for example, with the 592 and 591 killed in 1973 and 1974 respectively.

There's also a hoary old myth, currently being revived, which says that Charlie Haughey and Ray McSharry's savage spending cuts allied with Alan Dukes' noble Tallaght Strategy saved the Irish economy. In fact, unemployment was 16.9 per cent when that Government got in and 15.1 per cent the year it left. The FF/Labour and FG/Labour administrations which followed got it down from 15.1 per cent to 10.3 per cent in the same nu