The Stuff of Legends
If you asked Damo, Chris or myself about this particular incedent, and despite the madness of it all, there is no doubt in our mind that it ranks right up there as one of our greatest days ever. The trip to Japan for 17 hours….
With 60 minutes before our flight was due to leave Dublin, Chris who had managed to get off work hadn’t turned up at my house, our tickets out of Dublin hadn’t been confirmed and I hadn’t packed, but with about 45 mins before our flight to Heathrow was about to take off everything fell into place beautifully and we just about made it.
It was a last minute effort of the greatest kind. The very fact that we organised tickets, got to the airport on time and made it from T1 to T3 in heathrow without getting lost is nothing short of a miracle.
Unfortunately our plane was delayed for an hour (turns out we didn’t have to run from T1 to T3 afterall) which meant our window for landing and getting to the match was getting very close. We were now down to 16 hours in Japan.
12 hours in a plane never went so quickly and before we knew it we were touching down in Tokyo. Luckily my sister Aisling met us at the airport with train tickets that would take us to the ground, the Yokahama Stadium. This was my first every experience of Asia and not just me, but Damo and Chris were stunned by everything around us.
We were in our seats, with the Irish supporters as the national anthems were being sung and the 90 mins just flew by… 3-1 to Ireland and we were through to the next round.
Back in the hotel we had diner with the players and later drinks. They knew people were making the trip just to see the match. We chatted the Matt Holland for 15 mins and he thought we were mad. We were on too much of a buzz to drink much beer, but the fact that it was 3am the next day of something was starting to get to us. We hijacked my sisters room and got roughly 25 mins sleep. We actually slept it out… we missed the bus to the airport but luckily for us there was another one.
The trip home flew by considering we were sitting for 12 hours doing nothing. In total we were out of Ireland for 41 hours or which 24 were spent in the air. It will never be forgotten…