'Come on, we've only been waitin' 60 bleedin' years'

AIRPORT ARRIVAL:IRELAND'S HISTORIC Grand Slam-winning team arrived in Dublin airport yesterday afternoon to an ecstatic welcome from a crowd of about 2,000 fans and well-wishers.

News that the team’s Aer Arann flight from Cardiff had landed and the team was on its way came shortly after 2pm. It was followed by a roar that started somewhere in the baggage hall and echoed around the corridors to the arrivals area, rising to screaming pitch as a suited Brian O’Driscoll was first to march smartly through the arrivals doors.

Gas hooters blared and adults and children screamed their approval as players Ronan O’Gara and Gordon D’Arcy joined O’Driscoll for an impromptu photo session. As the flashes went off, the arrivals hall, which was bedecked in green, white and orange balloons and wallpaper-style pictures of the team, reverberated in an ear-hurting cacophony of noise.

It was almost too much for a couple of human-sized leprechauns in full dress as crowds surged forward, straining at a Garda cordon, hands outstretched, clutching paper and pens for autographs.

“Thirty seconds only,” O’Driscoll said as he paused for photographs, holding the trophy.

“Bumps and bruises don’t seem that bad when you are a Grand Slam winner,” he said.

As the team moved along the cordon, which stretched across the arrivals hall, out the doors past the bar windows and into the bus park, a sea of arms waved pieces of paper, pens and football shirts at the passing footballers, shouting mainly, it seemed, “Ronan! Ronan!”

Some were lucky in getting autographs, many were not, but there was only one low note when officials shepherding the team called out “no autographs, no time now, no autographs, please”. One man waiting by the doors replied: “Come on, we’ve only been waitin’ 60 bleedin’ years.”

Standing by the team coach, clutching an Irish jersey autographed by the main players, was Aer Lingus captain Derek Byrne from Wicklow town.

“I didn’t fly them back – they were on Aer Arann – but we were flying back supporters at the same time and I was able to walk in with them to the arrivals area,” he explained, before dashing off for another name.

On the bus O’Gara sat way down the back, one seat ahead of O’Driscoll, both players grinning like a couple of schoolboys in their blazers. They alternately smiled at the crowds of camera phones and joked among themselves.

By 3 pm the bus had moved off on its way to the Mansion House for the civic reception.