Archive for the ‘Parade’ Category

Paddy’s day

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

St. Patrick’s day yesterday was absolutely massive. I was part of Waterford’s St. Patrick’s Day parade onboard the ACSE boat which was a new and fantastic experience for me. Then it was off to the pub to watch Ireland hammer Italy in their Six Nations game. The 51-24 result meant France had to score 24 points more than Scotland in the following Six Nations game. That seemed a big ask and with Scotland doing well out of the gates we all thought Ireland had a good chance of winning the championship. France though started pulling ahead and at one point looked good to win. Somehow though Scotland pulled a try back and left Ireland in the lead. The pub went wild, celebrations about to begin when France in the last move of the game went over the line. But a Scottish defender had an arm under the ball and not even on the replays could anyone see if the ball was down. Somehow the TV ref gave the try and France won.

I have to say I haven’t felt that gutted over a sport’s result since South Africa failed in a Cricket World Cup years ago against Australia.

The day wasn’t over though and we happily watched Wales beat England.

Then the most amazing thing happened; Ireland beat Pakistan in the Cricket World Cup. Ireland beat Pakistan, who are ranked fourth in the world. Absolutely incredible. Easily the biggest shock of the CWC so far and probably for the rest of the tournament.

A pretty incredible day.

Spraoi

Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

Waterford’s Spraoi festival ended with a bang on Sunday night. A brilliant parade of macabre monsters and a pretty decent set of fireworks. I got a video of the fireworks (I would put it on YouTube but the “clever” system doesn’t like the portrait format of my video and auto-rotates it to landscape format. Which is daft.)

Spraoi monster

We then headed for the pubs and drank into the early hours.

Up the Deise