With the smell of drying paint in my nostrils and freshly-laid grass under my feet, I giddily surveyed the new Lansdowne Road stadium when it swung open its just-hung doors recently.

The elegant structure floats above the capital’s skyline and is as impressive inside as out. There’s room for 50,000 sports fans – and space for 50,000 pairs of legs to stretch out towards the sideline in the wide, comfortable rows of British-racing green seats.

The Aviva – if you’re going to call it that – boasts better media facilities than Montrose, Shane MacGowan will no doubt write stanzas about the length of the bars and the pitch doesn’t look too bad either.

However, like Gaudi’s famous Sagrida Familia cathedral in the heart of Barcelona, it’s beautiful but is unfinished. Or seems (italics) unfinished, at least.

Like a Celtic Tiger imagining of Hill 16, one end offers a mere 3,000 spaces, which are framed by a glass-like wall behind. Many a drop kick or wayward Leon Best shot will bounce back onto the turf after hitting its transparent tiles.

Compelled to fold the new stadium into an existing patch of expensive real estate in Ballsbridge the architects cut their cloth to measure. But though the flow of the undulating structure is broken at one curva by the shallower end, at least the opposition will feel the warm breath of Ireland’s soccer and rugby fans on their necks when they visit Dublin’s southside.

I spoke with two economists this week who explained – very slowly – to me, research that which showed that referees officiating in stadia with running tracks around the pitch are less likely to give hometown decisions and play less added time when the home side is drawing or losing.

Croke Park is magnificent obviously. But when the tenants from D4 lined out in an area too big for their specific purposes, some of the atmosphere was lost. It was only – I’d suggest – the Italy and France games last autumn that saw the football crowd find their full voice at last in Drumcondra.

And as that immeasurable commodity – atmosphere – is leaked into the dark Dublin sky, so too the referee is less affected.

Last month, I wrote of research that Robbie Butler – a lecturer in the economics department of University College Cork – and his brother David, a commerce student in the college had presented to the FAI on the effect a child’s birth day has on participation rates in soccer. The response from readers was impressive.

So when Robbie offered to talk me though their work on so-called Fergie Time, we put on another pot of coffee.

When the Aviva hosts its first soccer game in less than two weeks’ time, Alex Ferguson will be patrolling the touchline. A meaningless friendly against a Damien Richardson-managed Airtricity League XI, the Manchester United boss is unlikely to spring from the bench after 90-odd minutes and point at his famous wrist watch. When he goes – for he must someday – surely the statue outside the Stretford End they’ll erect of him outside the Stretford End will be cast in a wrist-watch-tapping pose.

Nevertheless, it was this habit of constantly querying additional minutes – and United’s perceived talent for scoring late, late goals, in particular Federico Macheda’s vital winner against Aston Villa – that prompted Robbie to examine the economics of added time.

“What we did is collected data from the BBC website for the 2009-2010 Premier League season,” says Robbie, as he leafs through pages of datea he’s thrown on the table in front of us. “It’s all there. So that’s every match in the season, that’s the amount of goals in the game because we thought that was important. It’s all the home teams first — who was winning, drawing, losing on 90.

“What the score was at 90, the margin, the actual outcome, the amount of subs, the amount of added time.

“It took me a few weeks — I should’ve been doing my PHD maybe but I enjoy doing it,” he laughs.

The new Aviva Stadium at Lansdowne Road

And, after hours of slogging over a hot keyboard and collating data neatly and carefully, the results were instructive.

“What was very interesting was what we found if you look at the tale when the home team is winning; on average, there was four minutes, 22 seconds added. When they were losing there was four minutes, 27 seconds and when they were drawing there was four minutes, 30 seconds. And that’s what you’d hope to find — that suggests there’s no bias. They’re playing roughly the same amount of time whether you’re winning or drawing or losing. So we were really happy when we found that. The next step was asking do the big teams get a bias?”

Robbie and Spurs fan David’s ‘hunch’ is backed up by the stats. “You want to get more time when you’re drawing obviously and look at who we have,” he says pointing at one end of a bar graph, “Arsenal, Man City, United, Chelsea, Tottenham. They get over five minutes when they’re drawing.

“And then look at the graph for when they’re losing — Arsenal, Hull (they had Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink knocked unconscious for 10 minutes and Jimmy Bullard broke his leg – skewing the figures, interestingly), Spurs, Chelsea, Man City, and Liverpool. Again the bigger teams get more time when they’re losing.”

So the myth is true. Fergie time exists.

“Ferguson and (Arsene) Wenger are the ones unhappy with the situation regarding added time, amazingly, and the exact opposite should be true,” says Robbie. “Ferguson is beyond rules. He’s untouchable and to be fair to him, he’s created that himself. He once said ‘we don’t lose a game we just run out of time’.”

But it takes the sands in United’s hourglass that bit longer to run out, we now know for sure.

adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in the print version of the Irish Examiner newpaper

It’s probably too small, too expensive and in the wrong place. But it is beautiful – and it’s ours.

I went along for the Aviva Stadium opening this morning. After a tour the press were ushered into the very large media room where FAI chief John Delaney and his IRFU counterpart Philip Browne sat at the top table, seemingly, ready to collect the garlands which would surely be thrown at their feet.

Alas, it was not to pass.

A defensive-looking Delaney was compelled to immediately volley back inquiries about the fiasco surrounding the FAI decision to deny Limerick FC the opportunity to play Barcelona.

Likewise, rather than talk about the roaring success that the Aviva evidently is, an unimpressed Browne had to shrug off questions about Eamon Ryan’s plans to snip the IRFU’s purse strings and legislate to make Heineken Cup games free-to-air. This was like asking the father of the bride about a small unpaid debt, right before the speeches on the big day.

But to the stadium itself and the extended version of MTV Cribs that our morning was. We enjoyed a guided tour earlier – and you’d want to be extremely cynical not to be impressed by the facilities.

There’s something about the FAI, in particular, that speaks to the inner grumble in us all, and there was certainly a few grouses regarding the north side of the stadium. Shoe-horned into the old Lansdowne site, that particular goal end holds only 3,000 seated and is bookended by a wall of glass. Personally, I love it. It’s idiosyncratic and unique – though present due to necessity rather than inspiration, it’s ours now – and is instantly recognisable. Many conversion or wayward free kick will hop off it in the future.

And that is what we were looking into. The future.

The same way piano players boast of being trained by a student of a famous maestro or composer. So too sitting into a seat in a stadium – I’ve written about this before – plugs you into a sporting history and connects you with the past.

But yesterday it was more like standing into a flux capacitor. This thing – for better or worse – will be there a long time after we’re not.

The outward shell has already settled comfortably into the capital’s skyline and the thousands of polycarbonate panels that make up the roof’s cladding were shown up perfectly in the early summer sunshine on Dublin 4.

Though my taxi driver afterwards insisted that the stadium is a monument to all that is wrong with both associations (“they didn’t build it big enough to play GAA, who’s excluding who?!”) it really is a special piece of architecture, as you’ll see below.

There’s plenty of leg room in each seat, the views seem good – although I’m uncertain you can see the team benches from the press area in the stand – there’s lots of bars, conference space, two big screens. Oh, and the pitch is lush.

(As an aside, Rick Reilly once wrote about being fed up with preposition golf courses – come play The Florida Experience or The Challenge at the Peaks of Del Frisco – well now we have Punctuation-Fess Football. I realise this is nit-picking on an atomic level, but every newly-erected sign reads something like: The Presidents Room, The Referees Area. Yeah? More than one President and they just hang around. Roy Keane would not approve of this oversight.)

From a fan’s point of view, it’ll probably be a costly night out with ticket prices looking expensive but it’ll be a good one. We’re promised that a pint of Guinness can be pulled in three seconds. When you walk in the concourse to the Atrium (which sounds how one says my name after a few three-second pints) you can see through the glass to the pitch – much like the San Nicola in Bari, for those at the Italy game last year – while there’s a piano upstairs where the Premium level is hosted along with RTE’s stuidio and the conference area.

It’s not quite a home yet. But once it’s full, it’ll be like we were never away.

See pictures, after the jump.

The view from press box:

RTE’s studio. Probably where Dunphy ultimately keels over with a massive Keith Andrews-induced heart-attack during a scoreless draw with Chile in a meaningless friendly:

The piano in the Atrium. It’s above the concourse where the riff-raff swill around and urinate in each other’s pockets. I like to think the Bankers will sit comfortably atop the grand piano and sip cocktails long after half time has elapsed, listening to Brendan O’Connor singing My Way.

Some guys lay sport’s hard-earned baubles out on a sideboard for all to see, long after fresh mud has been scraped from a career’s boots. And why not? It’s hard enough to win something, right?

Others, however, wrap life’s medals in yesterday’s headlines and tuck them into a shoebox, out of sight. Winners don’t pin victory to their lapel.

Brian Roche is one such winner.

As Leinster’s best gear up for a tilt at Toulouse tomorrow, before Munster attempt to get past Biarritz in the bullring atmosphere of San Sebastian’s Estadio Anoeta in the Heineken Cup semi-finals, it’s apposite to remember the first Heineken Cup medal won by a son of Ireland.

A 35-year-old-year-old from the down-to-earth Togher suburb on Cork city’s southside, Roche grew up swinging a hurley in the famous blue of St Finbarr’s before a Highfield clubman suggested the teenager give the oval ball a spin. No problem.

“I started to get on well with it,” he explained this week over a coffee. “I got into the Munster and Irish team in my first, second year. And I was on the Cork minor panel then and I had to make a choice. So I stuck with the rugby.”

Roche – a skillful winger or fullback — eventually joined Sunday’s Well in his early 20s. As the new era of professionalism dawned, it wasn’t long before a stranger who had stood observing the action on the sideline approached with an intriguing offer.

“I played away a season with the Well – which was my father’s club – and someone approached me to go over to Bath for a trial. But I was just after starting a new job at the time so I turned it down. And he came back to me then and he said he’d give me a contract. So I said, I’d be stupid not to – I was 22. So I said I’d give it a go. And I went over and gave it a lash – and it was great.”

The circumspect young Leesider pushed open the dressingroom door to reveal a Mount Rushmore of rugby icons. Faces he was used to watching on the BBC and talking with his father about; Guscott, Evans, Catt. Welcome to the big leagues, kid.

“I was nervous enough going in there first day with all the guys who I’d know from the telly. But they were sound. Fierce nice altogether. Like myself, just down to earth, get on with it.

“It was just after the Lions tour in South Africa and a lot of the players were back from that. It was the first year of the Premiership and it was a really exciting time. I got a start in the XV in the first few games that were shown on Sky.

“Bath were only after signing Ieuan Evans and he was after getting married and going on honeymoon. So I got a shot – and I was lucky, I took it. But I was never going to hold on to it with these guys around.”

In what was a different era for Irish rugby, Munster, Leinster and Ulster earned a meagre 10 points between them. Bath topped their group — Roche featuring prominently throughout — with the same amount and made it to the final in Bordeaux against Brive.

Brian Roche, left, evades Neath’s Ian Jones at The Gnoll in October 1998 during his time at Munster and, above, pictured in Bath’s gear.

As the English club won by a point, Roche watched happily from his flat in the picturesque English town with other teammates. It was no big deal when officials later slipped a medal into his hand. “I saw my Heineken Cup medal as a token from Bath after being involved in the group stages and was happy to accept it and put it away then,” he says, “I do see it as an honour but it’s done now and I move on. I don’t talk about it.”

After a stunning first experience in taste of the pro game, he then chucked another U-ie on the road less taken.

“I was always a home bird and I was mad to come back at some stage but maybe in hindsight I would have been better off dropping down a level and going to a team that were maybe bottom half of the Premiership.” Instead he tugged on the red of his home province.

As Irish rugby has reached new stratospheres in recent years, Roche was the sport’s Neil Armstrong. And astronauts always come back different.

“I came home and got into the Munster squad and I went and lived in Limerick and joined Shannon. I got into the side after about four or five games and kept my place for the rest of the year. And without playing another game I was out of a squad of 30-odd for the following year. And to be honest, I took that hard.”

After some to-ing and fro-ing the Togher hurler who worked all the way onto the same team bus as Jeremy Guscott, returned to play intermediate football with his beloved Barrs before he returned to Highfield who ‘kickstarted his career’ to captain the side to a league championship in 2004. It probably meant as much as anything minted in Bordeaux.

Meanwhile, the European quest continued for Munster and as most climbed aboard the freewheeling bandwagon, so too Roche moved on without it. “I was bitter for a while but I’ve moved on now. I haven’t gone to one Munster game since I stopped playing with them. I watch them on TV and I support them, because they’re a great bunch of lads, I just wouldn’t go to one. ”

Not that he has the time. After earning a level two coaching badge with the IRFU, as well as a fitness qualification, he has put the likes of the Barrs, Highfield, UCC’s MSL soccer team and most impressively the Cork hurlers through their paces. And typical of his uncanny timing, he had a front-row seat for the Rebels’ Gerald McCarthy soap opera.

“I learned loads from the Cork hurlers. Even their preparation – they leave no stone unturned; everything is looked into in minute detail. You throw all of those lessons into the memory bank and you use them again. I made mistakes coaching – and playing as well – but hopefully you don’t make the same mistake twice.”

If a European Cup win isn’t the top line on your coaching CV, then maybe being the man with the whistle standing between Donal Óg Cusack and Ger McCarthy should be. Though Roche insists he wasn’t concerned involved with any tension in Pairc Uí Chaoimh at the time. “You wouldn’t train a more dedicated group of players. They’re brilliant to train with. The issues with the county board were none of my business. They’re an unbelievable group of players.”

Where before sitting back and watching his contemporaries do what they do best on the biggest stage was not his idea of relaxation, if Munster win on Sunday, ‘Rochey’ will happily watch the Paris final with a group of friends on his stag night in a quiet West Cork town, ahead of his marriage to his fiancée, Nell.

Standing behind Roche when he’s married this summer, as throughout his career, will be his parents. His proud mother will watch on as her son achieves another personal first. And she might well wear an old gift from Brian on her lapel – a Heineken Cup medal he had made into a beautiful broach.

Okay, let me make a confession.

I nurse a clandestine habit that has driven me to the coldest and darkest corners of society.

When the house is finally still at night-time, I surreptitiously boot up the computer and, after checking over both shoulders, click into online forums to communicate with like-minded enthusiasts.

I visit specialist shops in the worst parts of town where the attendant nods discreetly as I slip into a familiar back room which holds the more unusual publications.

Yes, I can admit it now – I play the ukulele.

My quaint enthusiasm to what you might think of as a mere toy more than a musical instrument, a comical four-stringed ‘miniature guitar’ drives men like me to huddle together in cyber communities, exchanging the chords for the latest Vampire Weekend single or showing off a blue-grass strumming technique.

It’s a lonely life.

As Billy Connolly once said of the banjo, you never overhear a lusty-eyed woman in a bar lean into a friend and whisper: “See that guy with the banjo? He’s coming home with me tonight.” Rarely too, when someone asks, “Wow, whose car is that!?” is the answer: “Oh the Bugatti? That’s the banjo player’s.”

It’s not a dissimilar tale for the uke.

“Gwat has dish to glooo wick sporth!? I hear you splutter impatiently, dear reader, as bits of milky cornflakes speckle the breakfast bar.

Well, like a rare wild truffle or senior All-Ireland medals in the county of Mayo, us ukuleleists are thin on the ground. Therefore, I’m compelled to, and I’m choosing my words carefully here, jam online – using the free video-call software, Skype – with a greying middle-aged man who lives in a charming wood cabin on the Pacific coast of Oregon.

I thought of my pal (who’ll remain nameless because a. I don’t know if his wife knows he plays ukulele with a red-raw Irish fella on the internet while she’s out at work and b. If he Googles himself he’ll get an awful shock to be in the Examiner) earlier this week when Irish rugby’s two maestros Paul O’Connell and Brian O’Driscoll – presumably Paulie has forgiven his skipper for tripping him with his head in Twickenham – both tweeted about a special treat they enjoyed in camp.

Legendary baladeer Christy Moore offered the squad a private performance in their Dublin hotel on Monday night. Drico even revealed that he was allowed ‘to murder’ City of Chicago. There’s better men crashed on the rocks of that that tricky second verse, BOD.

Anyway the reason I bring it up is because the only Irish artist my friend in Portland ever name checked during our scratchy video calls was Christy. A man who, he appreciated, has built a career on great tunes, an unapologetic political awareness and sweat – plenty of sweat.

You get the feeling actually, given his earthy and creative credentials that Christy would ordinarily, like a lot of us, have a lot of sympathy for the body-swerving, coke-smudged face of Welsh rugby. But probably not tomorrow.

Michael Moynihan of this parish conducted a great interview with Jamie Heaslip last week that was more Smash Hits than Sports Illustrated with the flanker revealing a gra for the likes of Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine and my main dude Dizzee Rascal. All right up my street I must say.

But what Heaslip did not mention is that he ‘put his hand up’ and ‘backed himself’ as the oval ball fraternity insist they do and asked the bould Christy to give us a few bars of Dizzee’s modern classic ‘Bonkers’ after he finished up the Lakes Of Ponchartrain.

We can now reveal here that rather than singing that or indeed Dizzee’s breakthrough track ‘Dance Wiv Me’, Christy penned a special song for the rugby lads. Below it is reproduced, in part.

[Heart stopping guitar intro that goes on a bit as he, introduces the song with a story about a wild horse on the Curragh, the 1993 Rose of Tralee and David Campese]

Verse 1

“Oh, Jedward are on the Sky box pulling out the stops,

Joe Duffy’s on a mission, closing down the head shops

there’s a fella from Offaly in charge in Washington,

but Deccie can’t decide between O’Gara and Sexton”

Verse 2

“Now, the Celtic Tiger’s been and gone, it must have been a dream,

Bertie’s on a book tour, he was last seen down in Sneem,

Joxer packed the van for Jo’Burg, he fancied a safari

But Henry stuck the hand out in Paris, and called him a taxi

Yeooow! [Tommy Bowe can’t help but grab the mic]

Chorus

Singing, oooh Lansdowne Rd, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne Rd

Oooh Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne Rd

Don’t forget your shovel if you want to built the Aviva,

Croker’s closed again, so you better get your 10-year corproate ticket, I’m tellin’ ya

Oooh Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne, Lansdowne Rd… ”

It probably needs a bit more uke, Christy. But it’s as good as Ireland’s Call already.

Contact adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

This column first appeared in this morning’s printed Irish Examiner edition.

“He Marvin Gayed his own nephew. The boss of the family.”
- Vito, (referring to Uncle Junior shooting Tony)

Melfi: “How’d that make you feel?”
Tony: “I wished it was me in there.”
Melfi: “Giving the beating or taking it?”

“There’s an old Italian saying: you fuck up once, you lose two teeth.”
- Tony

“You’re not gonna believe this. The guy killed 16 Czechoslovakians. He was an interior decorator.”
- Paulie

“All due respect, you got no fuckin’ idea what it’s like to be Number One. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fuckin’ thing. It’s too much to deal with almost. And in the end you’re completely alone with it all.”
- Tony Soprano

Tony: I called you here, ’cause I got something to tell you. From now on, I’m gonna rely on you more and more, ’cause you’re the only one I can fully trust. Sil and Paulie… they’re old friends, but you’re one thing they’re not.
Christopher: What’s that, T?
Tony: Blood. You’re gonna lead this family into the 21st Century.
Christopher: Well, Tony, technically we’re already in the 21st Century…
[Tony looks at him, confused]
Christopher Moltisanti: Forget about it. You won’t regret this, T.

What fucking kind of human being am I, if my own mother wants me dead?
- Tony

There are no scraps in my scrapbook.
- Phil Leotardo