This time next year, Rodney…

Trap’s Irish squad fly out to Bulgaria today for the next step along the path to South Africa – hopefully. A draw or -whisper it – a victory brings the dream a little closer – the hope that this time next year an emerald tide will flood Jo’Burg and Cape Town and elsewhere to follow, once again, the Boys in Green at a World Cup.

It will of course follow the pattern of The Boys in Green qualifying for tournaments that require fans to re-mortgage their homes to get to. I was at the last Weltmeister, which was a little closer, in Germany in ’06.

It was an attempt to see each team – all 32 nations – on a budget of €150 per day. So that was including tickets, accomodation, food, etc. With hilarious and long-term consequences.

The piece below is from a time when the optimism and self-respect of the first round had just faded; I had already started collecting the plastic drink cups people left in the stands so I could claim the €1 refund, but had yet to steal gin from that homeless man in Frankfurt.

I lost my phone and with it all my photos on the second last night in Hamburg after an Italy game so the only graphic I could upload, apart from Il Trap, is the official form the German police made me sign in a Hannover interview room one morning. Instead reader, let me paint you a word picture! I offer you a three-year old article which was punched, with another deadline about to again disappear over the horizon, into an internet phone in Nuremburg’s Hauptmanhof one Sunday three years ago:

With the commencement of the second round or “the one-eighths” as some supporters here call it, the tempo, heat and ticket prices have been crudely hoofed skywards. Have it! On Saturday in Leipzig, the nipple tasseled, samba dancing circus that was Argentina versus Mexico roared into town on an ostentatious bandwagon.

The Latin American carnival flooded the entire city centre, with impromptu street parties chasing each other up and down narrow streets that look like the set for a clichéd cold war movie.

It was against the backdrop of this old city, brimming with all its tangible and impressive reminders of a communist past that a corrupted capitalism yesterday thrived. While last week we notched up several matches on the rocky road to seeing all 32 teams within the budget of €150, this was to prove a whole new ball game.

Immediately one realised that even finding anyone with a spare was going to need all the spy school skills of Ethan Hunt. Touts were few and far between, plenty having already sold on earlier to suck every last dollar or yen out of their gullible clients. This seemed, if you’ll forgive me, like a mission improbable.

Prices of €700 and upwards were quoted and paid happily right up until kick off, particularly by neutrals eager to catch a game. That fact that it was a Saturday and the sun was in the sky only encouraged the touts to make hay while it shone.

One frank exchange of views took place between myself and a helpful Cockney gentleman, as our synchronized watches ticked noisily. Me: “how ´much?” Tout: “a pha-sond”. “A thousand?” (walking away and wearing my incredulous mask). “How much d`you wanna pay, then?” “One hundred euro please”, I replied cheerily, pulling my money from my secret hiding place in my shoe. “Listen you Mick, you’ll end up sucking your facking potatoes through a facking straw if you waste my time again.” No deal then?

As kick-off time came and went this became a battle of nerve, who’d crack first? There was a group of lads, not unlike me, with limited resources who were trying to beat the banker too. Like Paul McGrath trying to marshal his back four, I held the line. We didn’t blink. The stock of the tickets in the touts’ greasy pockets plummeted with every touch of the ball on the pitch behind us. They grow nervous; we might just pull this off.

But, not for the first time in my dalliances with the black-market, a posse of Japanese fans break ranks and push, literally, €500 notes into the hands of our opponents paying €2000 for three category two tickets. These means they were worth about €45 or €65 and they did so without any attempt at negotiations. It was like Phil Babb decided to Roberto Baggio onside while McGrath and the rest were stepping out at exactly the right moment.

The fans from the Orient then sprinted like mad men up the many steps to the home of Leipzig FC. Game over. But at least we came in under budget.

Sunday though was a new day. But the same tournament. I traveled to Nuremberg for yet more trials for another one eighth. The temperature was appropriately turned up, while the volume in the neat town centre was cranked to 11. The main street looked like a July 11 march but with the Orangemen on acid. Dutch fans bedecked in fluorescent and garish team colours vastly outnumbered their Portuguese opponents who sashayed fashionably in purple up down the throbbing boulevard.

There were certainly tickets around and the prices were a lot more Euro trash than Rip off Republic but with accommodation costs and travel picking €50 from our pockets before we even asked the touts to dance, this was going to be a very short date.

Despite stalking the pretty ones with tickets, taking rejection with a little chuckle and just asking the next one standing against the school hall wall, I was to have a lonely night again. Luis and Arjen boogied without me but there’ll be other nights and other dances.

This piece first appeared in the Irish Examiner, sometime in June 2006.