Messages

Lots of venues in Sydney, see attached link, No cover charge ...

http://au.setanta.com/portal/systemcontent/page?open&systemtitle=ozvenues:pubchannel

For the very late games, you'll need to check with the venue toi make sure the're open..

I watched the Tyrone game last night in PJ O'Briens, but they closed after it and didn't show Mayo - Galway .. Lots of other venues with later licenses did though ...

test

Good to see Setanta is making a good start to the season ...
http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/tim-lane/ohailpin-raises-the-standard/2007/04/15/1176575680491.html
O'hAilpin raises the standard
Tim Lane | April 16, 2007

SINCE Kevin Sheedy took up permanent residence at Windy Hill more than a quarter of a century ago, there's been a unique dynamic to matches between Carlton and Essendon.

Tim Watson once said that, as a player, he invariably found Sheedy more urgent than usual before games against the Blues. This attitude was born, no doubt, of the great Carlton-Richmond rivalry of Sheedy's days with the Tigers.

Hatred is not too strong a word to describe the feeling between those clubs in the 1960s and '70s.

That a vivid aspect of Sheedy's past would make such an impression at Windy Hill says something for the power of history to shape future events. In his early years there, when Carlton was winning premierships, Sheedy's Bombers inflicted some terrible beatings on the Blues.

The pain of those defeats was subsequently conveyed to a new generation of Carlton players, such as Stephen Kernahan. Many years later he, and others, are conveying it to players of the present. Even to an Irishman who came to Carlton not with a pedigree from Gaelic football, but from hurling.

In Carlton's great comeback win on Saturday, Setanta O'hAilpin played as though he understood all of this. Early on, with his team losing both the game and its football dignity, he kept the navy blue flag rammed into the turf at one end of the MCG.

His head did not drop and his aggressive attitude didn't falter. When an O'hAilpin risk let Matthew Lloyd in for a goal, the Bomber skipper turned on a rare display of triumphalism. It was a sign the Essendon spearhead knew he was in a fight even if his team wasn't. Amid the first-half avalanche, Lloyd managed only two goals.

O'hAilpin's refusal to yield was manifest: a message to all around him. A man who had not played the game three years ago was stating, in front of nearly 65,000, that defeat wasn't countenanced, let alone conceded.

If the Carlton charge ultimately came in the second half, the hurler from Cork showed in the first that it was possible.

His opponent joined the all-time top-10 goalkickers' list on Saturday. It was not presumptuous to imagine he would be way too much for O'hAilpin. This is, after all, a full-back who doesn't know where to place the capital letters in his name, let alone set up a defence in a tough football match.

Yet, while Brendan Fevola was kicking eight goals against two of the best full-backs of the past decade, the Irishman, against the best full-forward of the same period, was unlucky to concede five.

Carlton and Essendon have differing tastes in many things, not least bookends. The Bombers might have picked theirs up at a Sotheby's auction, whereas Carlton's could have come from an Op shop.

Fevola isn't quite the polished product that Lloyd has long been, while O'hAilpin's 15 senior games leave him well short of either Mal Michael or Dustin Fletcher, who boast a collective five premierships. On Saturday, though, the odd couple were central to a classic win.

Fevola's second-half brilliance was such that his name will be associated with the match in the way Neale Daniher, Kernahan, Michael Long, and Fraser Brown are with earlier Carlton-Essendon epics.

And it was a day to stamp the name Setanta O'hAilpin as that of a real footballer, not just a curiosity.

Swans vs Lions is on live here at the moment..
Colm Begley has just scored his first goal in the AFL, Lions are winning 45 to 35 half waf through the second quarter ..

GAA club win leave to fight single use

SOCCER/Shamrock Rovers' stadium: One of Dublin's oldest GAA clubs have been permitted by the High Court to bring a legal challenge to a decision that the stadium proposed to be the new home of Shamrock Rovers be developed as a soccer-only venue.

The Thomas Davis club of Tallaght want to overturn South Dublin County Council's decision of February 13th, 2006 that the 6,000-seat stadium at Whitestown Way, Tallaght, should be completed for soccer only.

That decision was in accordance with a proposal of the county manager made in 2005. However, after a public consultation process and following a recommendation by the Tallaght Area Committee in November 2005, the manager's proposal was altered to one in favour of a multi-sport stadium, involving the development of a larger pitch suitable for Gaelic games.

The council on December 12th, 2005, unanimously adopted a resolution in favour of that proposal.

However, after the council were told that Minister for Sports John O'Donoghue would provide funding only for a soccer stadium, on February 13th, 2006, they passed a resolution which reverted to the original proposal.

The Thomas Davis club sought leave from the High Court to bring a judicial review challenge to that decision.

In opposing the application, South Dublin County Council and Shamrock Rovers had argued that Thomas Davis had no substantial interest in the matter and were not prejudiced by the decision. It was also argued it was never intended the club would have access to the stadium.

In his reserved judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill said the council decision of February 13th, 2006, individually and exclusively affected the GAA club. The stadium was in the club's area and the GAA club was the most likely to derive the most immediate and frequent benefit from access to the stadium, the judge said. It had established a "substantial interest" in the case and had raised the necessary "substantial" grounds required for leave to be given for judicial review of planning decisions.

On the face of it, the loss of the possibility of any use of the stadium as a result of the February 2006 decision would appear to be a substantial detriment to the Thomas Davis GAA Club. However, the development, if carried out under the December 12th, 2005, resolution, would have a significant potential benefit to the club, he said.

© 2007 The Irish Times

Humphries talks sense yet again ...

  Minister sours the sweetest moments
Tom Humphries

Locker Room: If there is one small fly in the ointment of joy that the wonderful and novel achievements of our cricketers in Jamaica have given us it is the suspicion that our Minster for Sport will demand any day now that GAA grounds be opened for the playing of cricket.

It has been a grand week for the Irish sports aficionado. Steve Staunton's droll press conference was followed by Ruby Walsh's glory and then the cricketing revolution. The rugby boys scored 50 points because they needed to; Sunderland won again; the cricketers became a great story; Ballyhale - the epitome perhaps of the possibilities and potential of the GAA - returned to eminence; and the Dub hurling evolution continued apace.

And all the while lurking behind the blue skies like a storm front was the grim, vinegar puss of John O'Donoghue, the last mealy, free-roaming mouth and curmudgeon still in existence outside of this column's acreage.

There were some who thought that when O'Donoghue made his comments a while back about the Solheim Cup and fashion for the ladies perhaps he had the brains of a rocking horse. We realise now of course that he has the heart of a lion. In a move distinguished by both electoral bravery and crass stupidity the Minister has chosen this time to put the boot into the GAA.

Fortunately, Kerry is not a GAA county or it might have cost him votes.

Thomas Davis, a GAA club whose volunteers have been working for the people of Tallaght since - well, since 1887 actually - are in the throes of a High Court petition seeking permission to bring a legal challenge on a decision that the new Shamrock Rovers stadium in Tallaght should be a soccer-only venue. Thomas Davis want to overturn South Dublin County Council's decision of February 13th, 2006, that the 6,000-seat stadium at Whitestown Way should be completed for the purposes of soccer only.

Readers with long memories will recall that back in 1995, when this saga began, South Dublin County Council had ambitions for a 20,000-seat stadium in Tallaght which would be multi-purpose and have James's Gate soccer club as the anchor tenant.

James's Gate were soon supplanted by Shamrock Rovers, the itinerant club who have never quite recovered from selling their splendid ground in Milltown a couple of decades ago.

Down through the years as Rovers changed hands and became involved in a variety of different deals the complexion of the Tallaght deal has changed repeatedly.

The stadium lies like a ghostly monument to incompetence. After a public-consultation process, and following a recommendation by the Tallaght Area Committee in November 2005, the county manager's proposal for a single-purpose venue was altered, getting everyone back to the idea of a multi-sport stadium involving the development of a larger pitch suitable for Gaelic games.

On December 12th, 2005, SDCC unanimously adopted a resolution in favour of this proposal.

Rovers seemed happy. The GAA seemed happy. John O'Donoghue? Not happy.

Extraordinarily, he announced he would only fund a soccer-only stadium. The SDCC, having little choice, passed a resolution on February 13th, 2006, which reverted to the soccer-only scheme.

By now most people will have their own opinions about the relative claims of the parties to the dispute. The GAA clubs (there are five other local clubs backing Thomas Davis) have been rooted and seeded in the community for generations. They have worked hard for what facilities they provide. Sometimes they have benefited from grant money and Lotto money; all the time they have worked themselves to the bone for the community.

Shamrock Rovers are a professional soccer club, a commercial enterprise. They chose to sell the best ground in the country. Through extraordinary mismanagement they have lacked a ground of their own since. Despite the lustre of their name and history they have proven themselves incapable of providing facilities for their own use.

For some reason John O'Donoghue has leapt in and promised to fork out millions of taxpayers' money to come to the rescue of this commercial organisation. This is generous, not just because of Irish soccer's long, prodigal history of squandering and blowing cash and failing to provide for drizzly days. It is generous because the Minister apparently feels the pain of every surrendered penny as if he were paying for it by sale of his own organs.

Heroically unembarrassed by recent criticisms of the physical-education facilities offered our increasingly obese children, the Minister instead rounded on the GAA, a body which on a volunteer basis provided for generations what passed for a sports policy in this country; the GAA, which has worked to be at the heart of every community; the GAA, whose clubs from Thomas Davis to Laune Rangers provide football, hurling, camogie and women's football for anything up to 50 teams week in and week out.

The Minister had the unfeasibly large cojones to suggest that because the GAA received some money from the Government in the last few years it should just shut up about Tallaght. The Minister suggested Lotto funds (set up for arts and sport, but ransacked by successive governments for health funding) were actually all part of his money from selling his kidneys.

In fact, it was Lotto funding which made up all but 19 million of the 114 million given to help build Croke Park (192 million is promised to Lansdowne Road, but we suspect that will never get built and rugby will go out on its own down in Ringsend).

Croke Park is the sort of infrastructural project the Lotto was designed for. O'Donoghue appears to think Lotto funding is a grace-and-favour scheme which might buy him the rights to the GAA's silence on all issues.

Warming to his theme, the Minister chose to ignore the spirit of the times we live in.

"I also find it quite extraordinary," he said, "that the GAA should wish to play Gaelic games in a soccer ground given their outright opposition to soccer being played in their own grounds."

Wow! Now the ignorance on display here is quite profound. It becomes us though to scorn the man's simplicity. It means either he hasn't noticed Wales will be playing Ireland in soccer at Croke Park on Saturday or he expects GAA clubs all over the country to begin throwing their overused, over-mortgaged grounds open to soccer.

The Minister, we are sure, knows this would be an arrangement which could never be reciprocated given the dimensions of the various pitches involved and the existing overuse of every GAA pitch in the land.

The Minister apparently wants the GAA, a community-based, volunteer-based cultural and sporting body, to carry the can for the long history of squandering and mismanagement which has blighted the world's greatest professional game as played in this country. Soccer, which once thrived here domestically, professionally and entertainingly, has become a grim sideshow of foreclosures and receiverships.

In Tallaght, the argument isn't against Shamrock Rovers, although John Donoghue planting Rovers there will inevitably hurt the GAA population. The point is that nobody feels Rovers have given enough to the community to merit the amount of State aid being allocated. There is an unfairness at the heart of the concept and the Minister's crass comments underline that.

The GAA has already been quietly hurt by the Government's decision to renege on an earlier promise that the rebuilt Lansdowne would have a pitch configured to permit the playing of the occasional GAA game.

The whispers are, though, that when the planning people get back this week the news will be that the stadium's proposed capacity will be whittled and the IRFU, a little surprised perhaps at the sweetheart of a deal the FAI were handed in the redevelopment master plan, will opt to cash in their chips in D4 and build elsewhere on their own steam (with, one hopes, appropriate Lotto funding to help). The Irish Glass Bottle Company in Ringsend would be the perfect site.

And so Irish professional soccer, a commercial enterprise which retails a genuinely beautiful game, but is domestically incapable of running its own business, will be homeless again. Will Minister O'Donoghue be able to find a way to blame it on the GAA? Of course he will.

© 2007 The Irish Times

http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2007/02/16/1171405443373.html

Look of the Irish has Pies smiling
Samantha Lane
February 17, 2007




COLLINGWOOD has had early success with Irish teenager Martin Clarke, who played an impressive first match of AFL football last night against a club whose punt on Tadhg Kennelly paid dividends long ago.

Former Bomber Ted Richards starred in the practice match played at North Sydney Oval, which was won by the Swans but used by both clubs primarily to trial youngsters and little-knowns. Sydney forward Adam Schneider, one of the few senior Swans fielded in the game, was a casualty.

Schneider, who played in last year's international rules series, limped from the ground clutching his left hamstring.

A scare went through the Magpies camp during the second term when Rhyce Shaw, who bounded back well from a knee reconstruction last season, left the field gingerly. But by the third term, he was back in business, narrowly missing a shot at goal that he took from a wing.

Otherwise, it was a night for the 9500-odd fans to imagine the future of the two clubs — most exciting, for Collingwood, that of a former teenage star of Gaelic football, now an international rookie in line to play a NAB Cup game next week. At 182 centimetres, Clarke was used predominantly on the ball, but also down back, and looked more than composed with the oval ball.

"We were really pleased with Marty, really pleased," Collingwood assistant coach Gavin Brown said after the game.

"He was probably the standout from the point of view that he had never played a game of Aussie rules before.

"It just showed that he has an enormous amount of will and want, and he had put in a lot of hard work. It was fantastic for him today, a good step.

"After tonight's performance, he has certainly put himself in contention (for NAB Cup selection next week), no doubt about that."

Filling the position of Sydney's No. 1 forward, Barry Hall was Richards. He provided a non-stop opening-quarter highlight, kicking each of his side's four goals for that term and finishing the match with a bag of five. All but one of Richards' majors were the products of strong marks taken outside the 40-metre arc.

Richards' February flourish made for quite an initiation for young defender Ben Reid, Collingwood's first pick of the last national draft. Reid spent most of his opening quarter of football in a black and white jumper chasing tail.

Collingwood, facing life without Chris Tarrant, used supersized youngster Sean Rusling at full-forward and third-year player Travis Cloke at centre half-forward. Cloke kicked three majors, all considerable distance from goal, and was his side's best performer.

"He was very pleasing," Brown said of Rusling, who was knocked late but cleared of injury.

Former Docker Paul Medhurst had stints in each quarter familiarising himself with a new attacking line-up, but had an uneventful outing.

It was an unconventional game in more ways than one.

The clubs swapped teamsheets days before the game, Sydney's senior coach wasn't even in the coach's box (Paul Roos put assistant John Longmire in the hot seat), 15-man sides were played, Collingwood had a 13-man bench and the first two quarters were 20 minutes long without time-on.

The next two lasted only 15 minutes each so the Magpies could get their plane home to Melbourne last night.

DETAILS
COLLINGWOOD

GOALS

Sydney:

BESTMathews, Malceski, Dempster, Richards, White, Bevan. Collingwood: Cloke, Johnson, O'Brien, Rusling, Cook, Dick.

Sydney:

INJURIESSchneider (hamstring), Moore (ankle).

Sydney:

UMPIRES: Head, Kamolins, Ryan.

CROWD: 9560 at North Sydney Oval.


SYDNEY4.1 6.3 9.4 10.6 (66)2.3 3.6 6.7 7.9 (51)Richards 5, Schneider, Mathews, White, Dempster, Currie. Collingwood: Cloke 3, Cook, Dick, Burns, Reid. b

Hi There,

For any of you Sydneysiders, I see from today's Australian that Martin Clarke will make his AFL debut tonight at the North Sydney Oval 6.30, Good Luck to him ...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21232677-5012432,00.html


Sherrin skills now first rate
Jenny McAsey
February 16, 2007

MARTIN CLARKE has only put the oval ball down to sleep and eat since he was recruited from Ireland by Collingwood last October.
But the strategy to fast-track the skills of the 19-year-old Irish rookie has paid off and he will make a surprise debut for the Magpies in the 15-a-side exhibition game against the Swans tonight at North Sydney Oval.
"Some of the coaches devised a plan that if I took the oval ball with me everywhere, around the house, even in the car at the lights to just have it in my hands I would get used to it quicker. That has definitely been a good plan because I can bounce it fairly well at the minute," Clarke said.

He can not only bounce it, but juggle the Sherrin with his feet, a deed that had his Collingwood team-mates clapping and cheering as they inspected North Sydney Oval yesterday.

Clarke, from County Down in the north of the Republic, is the latest arrival in the Irish invasion of the AFL that has gathered pace with the success of Swans' premiership player, Tadhg Kennelly.

Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse said the Kennelly "experiment" had prompted the club to scout Ireland and find Clarke.

"The few months we have had him he has progressed to the point where he will play against Sydney, which is a credit to him," Malthouse said.

Clarke's knowledge of the AFL before he arrived was limited to watching a Sunday night highlights package. Like Kennelly, he was a Gaelic football star who impressed recruiting staff with his athleticism and attitude.

Now he is aiming to play at least one senior game with the Magpies by the end of this year.

"The chances of that happening are probably slim but I will work hard and you never know," Clarke said.

He has spoken to Kennelly on the phone and will meet him for the first time tonight. "I just love watching him play and respect what he has done. If I can achieve that it would be amazing," said Clarke, who expects to play off a halfback flank like the Swans star.

Kennelly won't be playing as both clubs rest most of their senior players and trial youngsters and their draft recruits.

"It's mainly for the young guys to see how close or how far away they are from playing AFL footy," Swans coach Paul Roos said.

"It's been the start of some pretty good careers out here.

"It's going to be entertaining with a couple of experienced guys and the future of Collingwood and the future of the Swans running out here."

Sydney will play a handful of senior players including Craig Bolton, Ted Richards, Nick Davis, Adam Schneider and Nick Malceski, while Collingwood will field Shane Wakelin, Scott Burns, Leon Davis, Nick Maxwell, Rhyce and Heath Shaw, Travis Cloke and Fremantle recruit, Paul Medhurst.

http://sydneyswans.com.au/default.asp?pg=news&spg=display&articleid=314083

North Sydney Exhibition Match
2 February 2007
sydneyswans.com.au

When the Sydney Swans take on Collingwood at North Sydney Oval on Friday February 16, it will have been nearly five months since the Swans last outing.

Are you craving some AFL action and ready for the new season to begin?

From Monday, January 22, you can buy your ticket to the North Sydney clash by logging on to www.ticketek.com.au or calling Ticketek on 132 849.

All the details:

Date: Friday February 16, 2007

Time: 6.30pm

Gates open: 4.30pm

Pre-game activity: Coaching clinic at 5pm

Ticket prices: Adult tickets are $15, Concession tickets are $10 and any child under 15 years gains free entry.

Don't miss your chance to see the Swans take on the Magpies at North Sydney Oval - get your ticket today.

Only churls churlish over Croker lights
Tom Humphries

Locker Room: In the murky alcoves and quiet corners of the chat rooms there are still some contributors bellyaching and muttering darkly about next Saturday's floodlit extravaganza in Croke Park.

A friend used to describe the Liveline programme on RTÉ Radio 1 as a civic forum for cranks, and happily the internet and its humming chat rooms have extended the possibilities for that benighted portion of the population who are never happy unless they are grumbling.

To sneak around the chat rooms eavesdropping one would suspect the Dublin-versus-Tyrone shindig was like the Vietnam draft, a compulsory exercise and one likely to lead to death or maiming.

Legislation for the draft has apparently been drawn up by a cabal of media types with nothing better to do. Finally, it is clear the game will do nothing but harm, the least of its unforeseen consequences being media interest, which as we all know, hits a team like the MRSA superbug hits a hospital.

For the rest of us it's a nice little celebration. If you were dragged up a certain way the new year starts in earnest only when the serious GAA action begins again. That period of the year between the end of the provincial club championships to, well, next weekend is spent in a period of suspended animation, marked (well, more so than usual) by feelings of ennui, lethargy and slight depression.

Sure, there is the diet of soccer, the Premiership, The Roy and Niall Show , and the ever-entertaining soap opera of the domestic league, which even in its downtime lurches from crisis to crisis like a drunk walking against the traffic.

For a bewildering number of people on this island there is the Heino as well, an event we take more seriously than the rest of the world put together, and well, why not? If it mixes sport with a suggestion that somebody drinks this beer instead of that beer we're all for it so long as it ain't the GAA that's at it.

All those distractions are fine but they are somewhat remote. The country isn't in full gear till the GAA is up and running and speculative conversation abut the summer is coursing through the veins of the nation.

Next Saturday night is a celebration not just of the end of the winter doldrums but of the end of one period in the GAA's history and the start of another.

The first floodlit game to be played in Croker comes, as we'll tire of hearing over the next few months, before the gates are thrown open and the new tenants are let in.

There are a small minority of diehards, begrudgers and whingers who, like the poor, shall always be with us, and they aren't happy. These people attract cameras and microphones like starlets having wardrobe malfunctions on their nights out. A disproportionate amount of attention is given to things they would be better off keeping private.

These are people from within the GAA who believe that when they cut themselves shaving they seep green, green blood. They are the people from outside the GAA who actually enjoyed the GAA's discomfort over Rule 42. Cold-war types who still live it.

For both sides, Michael Greenan, of the Ulster Council, is an icon and his threat to run for the presidency of the GAA is a promise to bring both sides to business as it was practised, say, in 1959.

The rest of us (barring the iconic Michael Greenan) are just happy to see the back of that dark period of time and to be on the cusp of an era where the GAA's achievement at Croke Park is highlighted and talked about and welcomed and respected.

For the next few months we might still be backward-looking, swamp-dwelling stickballing Neanderthals but we are the ones opening up the grand house and taking the rent from our professional friends. Only a churl would be, well, churlish about it.

Dublin and Tyrone are a perfect way to start things off in the post-churl era.

Mention of those teams and Michael Greenan actually reminds us of that splendid piece of YouTube footage which showcases about five minutes of highlights, head-butts, high tackles and carnage from the Dublin v Tyrone game in the Skydome in Toronto back in 1990. Peter Canavan was 18 and looked like Rick Astley.

The so-called Battle of Omagh was sissy stuff by comparison, but there, scampering around happily in his referee's outfit on the artificial sward used for those foreign abominations of baseball and gridiron was our Michael Greenan.

There's a sense about this season that there is an All-Ireland out there for the taking. Missing a couple of stars, settling a few others and just getting his feet under the table is likely to hinder Pat O'Shea. Armagh are in a curious spot, too old in parts, too young in others. Mayo have John O'Mahony but have they the mental strength? Cork seem a little bit off, especially in the forwards.

That leaves Dublin and Tyrone. The Ulster champions have the best footballers and maybe the shrewdest manager but they've been rolling on for some time now and it will be interesting come summer to see if they have the intensity in their gut to play their high-pressure game. And Rick Astley is gone, taking with him that raw edge which made him so infuriating for opposition fans to watch.

And the Dubs? There's a point to prove after last August and it will take a few new faces to prove it. For a long time the rap on the Dubs has been that they take athletes and try to turn them into footballers (they actually take hurlers and turn them into footballers but let's not go there now), but with Diarmuid Connolly, Bernard Brogan and Dotsie O'Callaghan all bubbling up nicely there's a lot of class to choose from in their forwards.

Midfield is a slight worry in that Ciarán Whelan, patchy though his excellence is, can't go on forever, but the evidence in Tullamore yesterday is Darren Magee is coming back to the level where he is a serious option.

The defence is a greater worry. There's lots of talk about putting the Sigerson-winning midfielder Ross McConnell in the number three jersey for a while and, looking at the back lines, one wonders sometimes where the necessary toughness is going to come from. Where is the Gay O'Driscoll, the Pat O'Neill, the Paddy Moran, or Keith Barr or Eamonn Heery? Ger Brennan brings a little of that and there's a quiet constituency that likes the outside chances of Paul Brogan of Plunketts as well.

That's what makes next Saturday such an opportunity on every level. It's an occasion . The GAA celebrating itself a little while it stands on the threshold of history. And it's a game. Tyrone, who have been experimenting madly in the McKenna Cup, against Dublin, who have been a little more cautious but need three or four new faces to shake things up.

What could be better than throwing a few players into the mix in front of 82,000 people while playing opposition that wants to put down a serious marker? Both benches get a rare chance to see what their tyros might be like under pressure at the height of summer.

We all step out into the light on Saturday and two sides who fancy themselves for the long haul to next September get to have their credentials examined against that light. It will be magical and it will be interesting too. And it's only February.

Relax in the chat rooms, lads. Enjoy the show.

© 2007 The Irish Times

This might be why The french police don't care ...
From Trevor's diary for the erc ...

http://www.ercrugby.com/eng/32_6210.php



On Tuesday I set off to work, came round the corner and came to a police checkpoint. Thankfully I had my mobile phone on speaker when talking to a friend and I also had my seatbelt on, something I've been caught for a few times. I knew that the first policeman recognised me as he told me to pull my jeep in.

I pulled down my window and about five police came over and got me out of the jeep. "What's the problem lads?"

"Ah nothing. Everything's okay. We just want to know what happened on Saturday?"

"I wish I knew," I tell them, and everybody else who has been asking me for the last few days.

They asked me: "Did you think you got that try?"

"Well, I think so," I say.

  There was no anger or animosity, just pure shock everywhere. No-one can believe it, understand it, or explain it.

"We just stopped you to let you down that all the police in Toulouse are behind you and we hope you go on and win the Bouclier." They had been stopping every second car but now everybody else was being let through. The other drivers must have been delighted.