So. It was wet and every shivering one of us had drink taken and we were keeping one eye on the taxi queue which was building up across the road on College Green.
Something happens me when I get into a line for an ATM machine. The person in front always wants to order a statement, pay three bills and read a chapter of Dickens into the machine. They take so long that I fear that the cheques I have written during the day will have cleared and the machine will flash up its condescending message about being "sorry, but you don't have the funds, the dinero" and the people behind me in the queue will be looking over my shoulder and wondering why somebody with no money would queue for 20 minutes at an ATM machine in the rain.
Anyway, we were getting near the front of the line when a stag party from Wigan came barrelling through our ranks showing us their buttocks and encouraging the women in the queue to display their bosoms for the edification of the lads. By the time that cultural exchange was over our pass machine queue needed reorganisation. The woman beside me turned to me and said: "Who's next?" I said: "I am. I swear." She said: "Right so. You're next."
And that's how on April 17th this year I will be fighting Moira McDonald (47) of Old Bawn, Tallaght, for the vacant WBO heavyweight belt. The bout will be live on HBO in the States and my people will get together with Moira's people this week to discuss whether to have it in Croke Park or Vegas (the usual dilemma). I have the hypnotist on retainer already.
One word. Don't try to duck me Moira. You know pound for pound I was the most in debt of all the people in that queue and I'm coming to kick some ass. I'm The Celtic Scribbler. I'm baaaad.
I'm bad but stupid with it. On the other hand, Steve Collins, The Celtic Warrior (Mr Warrior, to you pal) ain't stupid. He says so himself. He has been around, he has survived and has prospered. As such, it is hard to believe that there isn't some angle or validity to his claim to be next in line to fight Roy Jones in April. It's just hard to see it.
What happens next is The Warrior's problem however. Perhaps by virtue of the brassiness of his neck he will be permitted to skip the queue and get a crack at one of the best fighters on the planet. Despite having left almost nothing but smouldering bridges behind him in the boxing world in the States, somebody will decide that he is good box office.
To come home from a trip to the States and claim loudly that you are back and this time, Roy, it's personal, seems like too dumb a move for Steve Collins to have made without being genuinely under some misapprehension about the cards held by the people he was dealing with.
That is unfortunate, but it is Steve Collins' business. Our business is sports journalism and last week was another sorry one for us. We don't like to be sanctimonious in this column (well, we do, we just don't wish to appear to like it), but when exactly did it become our habit to print and broadcast things as fact merely because somebody says they are and because we wish them to be? Is it any wonder the real journalists in the newsroom snigger at us?
Steve Collins came home from the States last weekend and announced to a surprised nation that he was going to be getting it on with Roy Jones Jnr this spring. By Tuesday the hype machine was in full gush.
RTE couldn't get enough of the thing, trembling reporters relayed the good news as if the country had won an unexpected tranche of EU funds. Evening papers agonised over the right venue and what appetisers to serve. Experts were consulted as to the chances of The Warrior doing himself justice.
To those of us who thought that Collins had retired to his dotage long ago this was all surprising news. Roy Jones operates in one of boxing's more respectable neighbourhoods. The WBC and the WBA will often at least pretend to do things right. They are fussy about mandatory defences, etc. Then there is the telly. Lou diBella of HBO is a young, hard nut working in a tough business.
If you've met Lou diBella two things strike you. One, he doesn't take much crap in a business that is full of it. Two, he likes to be hands on at practically every event. If you've covered boxing you've come across Lou diBella. And Lou diBella wasn't saying much about Steve Collins early last week. Seemed odd.
Why was Collins being allowed to bolt from retirement and leapfrog a queue of contenders for the dubious privilege of getting pasted by Jones? Why was there far more noise about the bout on this side of the Atlantic than on the other? Why was one of the most respected and assiduous boxing writers in the world, George Kimball (writing in this paper), openly doubtful about the whole business from the outset?
It was Michelle Smith Syndrome all over again. Sports departments are the Good News Fairies of the media industry. If we wish hard enough for something to be true, well, maybe it might just be true. If we screw up our eyes tight and don't ask any obvious questions, well, maybe the questions will vanish in a puff of smoke.
You know how it works. It is December, 1993, and we are sure that FIFA will base the Irish team in Boston for the following year's World Cup because, well, because the world revolves slowly and gratefully around us is why. Duh.
It is 1996, and the old swimmer with the cheating athlete husband who coaches her has just won three gold medals in the Olympics and the rest of the world is wrong about her. Why? Because she is Irish and she has red hair and her parents are lovely people and the world is always out to get the Irish. Duh.
It is 1999, and the best fighter in the world wants to get in the ring with Steve Collins, he of zero profile in the US, he of the retirement, he of the no special place in the pecking order of challengers. It must be true, sure The Warrior had a press conference. Duh.
Steve Collins is the guy who packed up a genuine career in the US and came home and reluctantly took the Sky shilling and fought on that second-rate circuit for a few lucrative years towards the end of his career. He didn't have to face any more McCallums or Johnsons. He made a few bob and the supine Irish media cheered till they were hoarse. Good luck to him.
Last week Collins seems genuinely to have thought that he had a chance at getting into a ring with a top-grade fighter again. There is enough of the competitor in Collins to relish that prospect, the chance to measure himself away from the panto scene of Sky Sports in the real world where he might have been a contender.
Maybe he was mistaken. Excusably so, which is more than can be said about the media hoola hoola girls who just can't pick up a telephone while they have their pom poms in the air.
You'll never beat the Irish.
