"That's What Makes You Beautiful" - Paris Tour 2014 Part 2

  If Friday was about makeup, fancy cars, glitz and glamour, then Saturday was about mud and guts.  What do you expect though; this is a rugby tour after all!

  Breakfast was devoured by everyone that morning, with lots of note-comparing and discussion on what were pancakes and what were crepes, where the fruit was, which juice was the nicest and how similar the 5me arrondissement of Paris is to Dublin 11 ("I'm tellin' ya miss - exactly like Ballymun").  After breakfast gear was sorted out and argued about, while the number 28 was counted over and over.  We had a training session this morning and we were heading to Parc Heller d'Antony, some twenty kilometres outside of Paris centre to train with the coaches of AntonyMetro92 - one of the academies for Racing Metro 92.  The drive brought us to a really nice outskirt of Paris and to one of the prettiest parks you could visit.  Even if the pitches were essentially mudbaths.

  Our coaches, Michel, Frank and Laurent, were extremely generous and helpful.  Our session was due to take an hour and a half; we ended up spending over two hours on the pitches with them!  They gave us a brief talk on the history of their club, its connection with Racing Metro 92, their club philosophy and what they expected of all players on their pitches.  All this was explained in French too, so our trip had an educational bonus!  The drills were fast, fun, and mucky, followed by a very mucky game.  The coaches got involved too, and there was a lot of fun banter about the upcoming Six Nations clash between France and Ireland, and about players on various teams.  The coaches were big fans of Leinster rugby, and of Brian O'Driscoll.  They even christened one of our players "Brian" due to how fast he was (even if he did get chased down by a 52 year old frenchman who ripped the ball from him in a tackle).

Muck, mud, rugby. A perfect combination.

  The session was over too fast, but we had a snack in the clubhouse, accompanied by more banter and craic.  Time to get back to the hotel, change, shower, count to 28, and head to Stade Yves Manoir for the Racing Metro 92 versus Castres Olympique game.
  We were glad, in ways, that Jonathan Sexton wouldn't be playing that night, but also a bit disappointed that we wouldn't get to see him.  We'd have to 'settle' for ROG.  We got dropped directly to the door by our bus and went in past the friendly security guards - who would be shortly replaced by the stereotypically rude and obnoxious Parisian security guards.  Our seats were located, and the green flags were deployed.  There would be no mistaking where we were from!

"Ballymun RFC on tour miss!"

  We would like to apologise to that anonymous Frenchman who complained in a very vocal and French way when Ms Haverty offered to swap seats with him so that he wouldn't be stuck in the middle of some screaming Irish kids.  We're sure that his hearing has almost returned to normal at this stage, and we do think that the frequent but accidental blocking of his view by flag-waving Irish teenagers was completely unintentional. We don't really remember the result (it was an atrocious and classless game of rugby) but we do remember Ms Brady engaging in diplomatic negotiations with the security guards which got us onto the pitch at the end where we got to mingle with the teams.  Most of them were unknown to us, but others like Jamie Roberts and Richie Gray we knew and had some craic with - something along the lines of "na, na, na naa na!"
  The highlight of the night came outside the dressing rooms when we were waiting for ROG.  Mike Phillips (Welsh scrum-half, yellow-carded during our 6 Nations game in the Aviva, twitter spat with Niall Horan, &c., &c.) was on his way and Ms Brady suggested that we sing a One Direction song to him.  He took it well, we had a laugh, Jamie Roberts (his Welsh team-mate) recorded it and the results can be seen here.  The video went viral a week after we came back, being mentioned on the Irish Independent website, the English Daily Mirror, Rugby Banter Pages, Ultimate Rugby (owned by BOD no less), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and probably loads of other things that only the cool kids know about.  Fame, folks. Fame.

ROG, our friend, at the back.

  Back to the hotel, with one very Parisian bus-driver, and some grub.  Some of the girls went into the hotel restaurant, where the chef gave Sinead Aspell a feed of potatoes for free!  Our friend in the take away couldn't believe his luck, again, when a horde of famished teenagers helped double his profits for the month!
  Another great day, done.  With a trip to Disneyland to look forward to ("so we're off to Funderland tomorrow, aren't we miss?") and then the trek back to Ireland.