Ulster's Sporting Heroes...

During a recent trip to my wife's home town of Ballymena, I noticed a sporting exhibition at the local town hall/conference venue.  After taking my kid to the soft play and leaving my wife to chat to her friends in the cafe I dived back into town to check it out.

The footballing exhibits were the most interesting for me, but I also enjoyed a lot of the other information and pieces on show, particularly the boxing sections and the information about local cyclist Billy Kerr who sadly died recently.  Until then I was unaware of the level of enthusiasm for road cycling in Northern Ireland.

 A nice feature on Alex Higgins.  

After the exhibition I adjourned to The Front Page for a quick pint and a read of the sports pages.

Where everybody knows your name...

Now resident in Belfast, the recent Scotland v Liechenstein Euro 2012 qualifying match offered Graham an opportunity to sample life as an exiled Scotland fan....

My plan for Scotland’s first home qualifying match, since I don’t have Sky Sports, had been to have a few beers and find an on-line stream. A text from a mate, however, led to quite an eventful night. Rossco is an ex-flatmate of mine who was over in Northern Ireland visiting his wife’s family for a few days and suggested meeting up and watching the match, all I had to do was find somewhere showing the game. This proved to be harder than it sounds with both the Republic of Ireland and England playing at the same time as Scotland!

After a few days of phoning round various pubs I posted on the Tartan Army Message Board and got a couple of suggestions. Both The Botanic Inn and the Lavery’s said they would be televising the game and both venues looked nice enough from their websites. So come 5pm Ross and I met up, we grabbed a quick burger and our first beer of the night and then, after what was a mental toss of a coin, we ended up going to The Botanic Inn . Whilst we didn’t make it to Lavery’s I'm pretty sure we made the right choice.

I had decided this should probably be a quiet night catching up with a mate and watching a match, especially given I had work the next day, but more than often my quiet nights don’t go according to plan. The Botanic were showing the ROI game on big screens in the main bar and then in the front bar they had three screens on display, one for each match. Rossco and I got set up in the Scotland corner...2hrs to kick off...pints time! So as 8pm got closer the beer (Guinness for Ross) had been flowing very nicely and we had got chatting with our fellow Scots about how many goals we were going to put past a team ranked 102 places lower than us by FIFA...ah misguided optimism.

In fact we were so collectively confident that we were noising up "England corner" saying we would score more than them and ROI combined. In the middle of this were some German tourists who were getting sporadic updates of their latest score against Azerbaijan (6-1 at FT).

The lads including (from right) Callum Capello and Birthday Paul

I'll skip the match report but as the 1st half drew to a goalless conclusion we all started to get worried but we surmised that as soon as one went in we would relax and the floodgates would open. After the second half kicked off I was up at the bar when a bloke on the stool next to me says "they've scored lad", my mouth was opening to say “aye right” but the profanities I could hear in various Scottish dialects stopped me in my tracks. Disbelief soon gave way to rational thinking, we still had 45 mins to pull this back and this will be the kick up the arse we need. A full twenty minutes ticked by and the frustration had built so much that when we did finally equalise the celebrations weren't the most jubilant I’d ever seen. Any confidence gained from that goal soon dissipated as the second half looked to be closing much like the first half did - with sod all to show for it! We were now playing the game of ‘who can think of a worst result ever’ and this was winning by a mile.

Now anyone who’s been drinking with Ross knows that once he breaks the seal it’s then two pisses for every pint and low and behold, right on the 96th minute nature came calling once again. It was at this point that McManus headed in a stunning winner......BANG! The pub went mental and I ran into the bogs screaming and remembering at the last second not to try and hug Ross whilst he was cock-in-hand. This is not related to the previous cock comment, but I don’t think the Germans had seen anything like it, but they seemed to have enjoyed the atmosphere before leaving reasonably early enough so as to enjoy their trip to the Bushmills distillery the next day.

Several hours of celebrating later, Ross and I found out that the lads we had been chatting to were proper locals and frequented this pub most Saturdays. It actually ended up being a triple celebration as we discovered one of the boys, Ian, had just married Helen the barmaid. Additionally, given it was now Wednesday, it was Paul’s (another regular’s) birthday the perfect excuse for more drinks! Ross was due on the last train at 23:20 but I can only imagine what time the taxi got him back to the in-laws for. I know I got home just before 3am....thank goodness I can work from home is all I will say.

Callum Capello and Ian

All in all a great time was had at the Botanic and the regulars were all very friendly. It’s one of the few pubs I have ever been in, that have had the kind of atmosphere where I think you could turn up by yourself and still have a great night.

I look forward to more nights down The Bot with Ian, Paul, Jim and Callum Capello. I just can’t decide if I would rather be Norm, Cliff or Frasier...either way...Cheers!

Ground spotting in Ireland, Geek alert.

I'm back in Edinburgh after a wonderful couple of weeks visiting family and friends in Ireland, although I failed miserably in my quest for WiFi hotspots. To be fair I located a few in the various towns we visited but I doubt that any ideas I had of ditching the family in favour of a quick blog post would have been well received.

I did manage to occasionally sneak away to take photographs of a few sports grounds and I managed to make it along to Portadown's Europa league ties v Skonto (which I'll talk about in a separate post) so Ican't complain.

I've decided to post the sports related photos up on the blog with a description for each..... Humour me.

Main entrance to Shamrock Park, Portadown.

Portadown and Skonto line up pre match.

Naomh Connail GAA club, Glenties, Co Donegal.

Score board at Naomh Connail, Glenties

Naomh Connail in the sun from a distance.

Outside main stand at Finn Park (Finn Harps FC), Ballybofey, Co Donegal.

Away terrace at Finn Park, Ballybofey.

Main stand at Finn Park, Ballybofey.

Main gates at Sean MacCumhail Park, Ballybofey (home of Donegal GAA).

Inside Sean MacCumhail Park, Ballybofey (they'd left a gate open).

Terracing at Sean MacCumhail Park, Ballybofey.

Sean MacCumhail CLG social club at the ground.

Na Rosa, GAA club (in the distance), Co Donegal.  I Wouldn't fancy playing there against the wind!

Whilst I was in Northern Ireland I had grand ideas of heading to Belfast for a day and taking photos of the various sporting themed murals which are cropping up in both nationalist and unionist areas, replacing the paramilitary murals.  Sadly I just didn't get time.  It's positive that Northern Ireland's tradition of mural painting is continuing but in a more inclusive and peaceful manner.

Here are two from Belfast, one of which I saw but didn't managed photograph so I obtained it through Google images (the Alex Higgins tribute).

Tribute to former snooker World Champion Alex Higgins.

A mural in celebration of Northern Ireland 1-0 victory over England in 2005.

George Best mural outside Windsor Park (taken by The Bruce at the Linfield v Rosenborg match).

I was hoping to drive through the Bogside area of Derry on our way to County Donegal in the Republic, as they have a few sporting murals dedicated to Glasgow Celtic, Derry GAA and Derry City FC.  Again I just couldn't fit it in.  There's always next time!