Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

Sorcha says she’s – oh my God – so excited about Saturday and I tell her I am too. She goes, “These are the moments, aren’t they?” Which is random because she’s hasn’t shown the slightest flicker of interest in rugby since she thought Rob Kearney gave her a smile and a wave at Taste of Dublin the year before the pandemic and I didn’t have the hort to tell her that he was smiling and waving at me.

So what do you think? Yeah, no, Nicola – as in, like, Honor’s girlfriend – is showing me a watch that she bought from, like, Tiffany of all places? It must be, like, a grand’s worth.

The old man asks me if I’ve been boning up on my Spanish ahead of the trip to Bilbao. I’m like, “Is that where Bilbao is? In Spain?” I honestly think I learned more from rugby than I ever did at school.

So I’m in the gym and I’m bench-pressing, I don’t know, something ridiculous, when all of a sudden there’s someone standing over me and – yeah, no – they’re, like, talking to me? I take out the old AirPods and sit up and it ends up being Nicola, as in, like, Honor’s new – in fairness – girlfriend. 

The old man is sitting in the corner of what was once Shanahan’s on the Green, sucking on a Cohiba the size of a Daihatsu exhaust. 

Sorcha asks me how I’m feeling and I tell her I’m in scintillating form – especially after the win over Sale yesterday. I’m half-thinking of doing my joke about having a semi to look forward to – but then I think better of it.