KEY POINTS:
Every tour has its moments. The Irish stitched me up suggesting Munster's Mick O'Driscoll was a brother of the national captain so please, cease all correspondence, I swallowed the sucker line.
But it did not end there in Ireland. An original bright idea to leave Munster early, drive to Cork and catch a cheap flight to Cardiff, dimmed a little after a brief sleep. It got worse when we hit a traffic snarl-up, waited some time for it to unblock before a retreating truckie told us it was a bad smash and the road might be blocked all day.
We slapped on a u-turn and with the blessed assistance of sat-nav and other motorists hit with the same plight, forged another trip through lanes that were scarcely wide enough for a tractor. The plenty of time we had before dawn had suddenly evaporated. It was going to be tight, almost a photo-finish like the All Blacks win over Munster the night before.
Another traffic snaffoo just outside Cork boiled the body temperatures as telephone inquiries revealed there were no other flights to Cardiff. We skirted Cork and after several attempts to drive through exit lanes to the terminal, our carload spilled out with yours truly dispatched to sweet-talk the airline staff. Someone suggested the flight was due to leave in about eight minutes. The odds were not good.
However there must have been a timetable glitch in our favour because the Air Arran staff, while urging us to hurry, accepted our bags, bodies and excess luggage freight and we scuttled gratefully through check-in, customs and onto the plane.
There were the mandatory questions and taunts from other scribes who had clearly travelled on other roads and missed all the drama. But we had made it and on the second consecutive day of brilliantly fine weather in Ireland we took off on a spectacularly scenic flight to Cardiff. Usually you have to be told you have crossed the border into Wales because you can't see it but yesterday, the principality could be seen in all her finery. If this weekend's international matches the flight it will be a corker.
Wynne Gray
Munster's Mick O'Driscoll is not the brother of Irish captain Brian. Photo / Getty Images
