Trevor Brennan's Diary: On moving into the second row, getting the Da measured for trousers and heading to Lourdes for the cure.
THURSDAY
We meet in the club at 10.30 a.m. for the Leeds game the next night. I pick up a few bits and pieces, as we always stay in the Meala Golf Club Hotel the night before home games in the European Cup or the French Championship. All the lads are talking, so I ask what is wrong.
"Qu'est-ce que se passe?"
"Fabien (Pelous). Il est malade."
He has a temperature of about 40 degrees, and I think the normal is about 36 degrees. All the lads start joking that I'll be in the (second) row against Leeds, and I just laugh and nod my head. I'm rooming with Milo Chosky, a young second row, who played in the French under-21s last year and this year. He's the obvious replacement for Fabien.
At 11.30 we watch a video of Leeds against Sale. They look to be a good, all-round side.
Lunch is the normal ham salad starter, followed by pasta and pork. Something of a French speciality. All of a sudden Milo jumps and runs to the toilet to get sick. It turns out he has gastroenteritis.
When he comes back I'm full of sympathy for him, and tell him that that's the end of our room sharing arrangement. So he goes to the manager and pleads for a separate room. He's given his own room and segregated for the remainder of the day from the team.
At 4.30 we have a run at the Stade Deniers. I ask Serge Lairle, our forwards coach, if Fabien's and Milo's sickness means I'll be playing in the second row, and he says no, Milo is going to be okay and if Fabien isn't right then Milo will play in the second row.
FRIDAY
At our 11 a.m. team meeting Serge tells me I'm in the second row. I tell him "thanks a ******* million". All I can think about is the lineout calls. We have a load of new options for this game and that's why I'd asked him, because I wanted to learn them off. There's nothing worse than being told on the day of a game that you're going to be in another position than your normal one.
It gives me something to do though. Match day is a long day, especially when you're not playing until 7.30 at night. I'm also feeling a bit tired. We arrive at the stade just before the game and the place looks like it's buzzing, but the rain is pelting down.
My dad, Rory, otherwise known as "Six Bottles", my brother Errol, a.k.a. "The Duke", and his girlfriend, Ciara, had arrived over the day before to watch the match.
This morning they'd gone into town to do some shopping and the Duke had rung me to say Rory was looking at some cords in a shop and was going mad. He'd been asking for a 42 in waist and a 30 in inch leg but was complaining that they don't speak English. "I've been trying to explain to him that he's in France, but he says 'no, no, they should be able to speak English'," said Errol.
So I ring him myself a few moments later and point out to him "you're in France and how much French do you have?" So I tell him that I think it's the same system over here - quarante deux for the waist and trente for the leg.
Anyway, after trying on about 20 pairs of trousers he leaves the shop in the trousers he arrived in, and he decides to buy two jumpers instead.
The game is a tough one. We lead 9-0 at half-time through three Frederic Michalak penalties. We find a bit of rhythm in the second half but we still find it hard work breaking them down. We have three or four try-scoring opportunities that we just killed in the very last phase, either by turning the ball over, knocking it on or giving away penalties, before Yannick Jauzion scores in injury time for a 16-3 win.
It's a bit disappointing, as we'd targeted our home games as a chance for bonus points, but I suppose after losing in Edinburgh the week before, a win is a win.
After the match, the artist Phil Browne, who's always at our matches, had an exhibition in the Killarney bar and a lot of the players went to it. It turned out to be a late night and a great laugh. Myself, the Duke, Six Bottles (who has now changed his name to Two Bottles of Whiskey and coke) and William Servat finished off the night with a whiskey before leaving the Killarney in the early hours of the morning.
SATURDAY
I go out to the car to find that my brother had left two of the car doors open all night and five or six of the neighbourhood cats had made it their home. Believe me, it needed a good valeting. I was like a bull with the brother for that.
We have a recovery session at 10 a.m. in the pool at the Calceo swimming club. On hitting the water I feel like I've jumped off the Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead boat. I thought I was going to drown.
That afternoon we headed into town. Poor old Ciara was not feeling too good so we left her to have a nap in the car while we went for some lunch. When we got back she was still asleep. Later that night the Duke, Rory, and a friend of mine over here from Cork, Dave Hickey, went to the Frog and Roast Beef for a few Saturday night quiet ones.
SUNDAY
The headex tablets didn't work so the father suggested we all go to Lourdes and pray for a miracle to clear our heads. Myself, Rory, The Duke, Ciara, Paula and the two kids head off on the hour-and-a-half trip down the M62. The roads are quiet to Lourdes at this time of year so it's fairly quick. It's a good experience for them as none of them had ever been to Lourdes before. I've been there about six times now. I feel like Padre Pio at this stage. I must be the holiest Irishman in France.
It was a quiet day, just spent with the family. That evening I dropped them off to the airport. I think they had an early night.
That night Rogere Rooney, in the Killarney, held his annual Christmas dinner for about 30 of his regulars before heading home for Christmas. His wife, Marie, always cooks up a gorgeous meal. Phil Browne dressed up as Santa Claus. It was the first time I'd ever seen the kids so quiet, but it didn't last long. Five minutes later they were killing each other for the toys.
MONDAY
Back to training again. We start off the session with our fitness guy, Dominic, and it turns out there'll be no sight of a rugby ball. Instead we're going to run up and down the steps of the stand all day. One-leg hop up the steps, two-leg hop up the steps, bounding up the steps, sprinting up the steps. Any way you can think of going up a stairs, we went up it that day.
After every six exercises we stopped for a minimum of a minute. After the third set of six I looked across and saw Michalak, Clement Poitrenaud and Vincent Clerc coughing away. I thought they were sick but then I realised they each had a fag in their mouth and another on their ears. They'd found a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. They lit them up and were puffing away. Believe me, this actually happened. I nearly fell down the stairs I laughed so much. Even Dominic could do nothing but laugh.
That morning I asked Yannick Bru why the French clubs travel so badly in the European Cup. He explained that French teams have a massive discipline problem away from home. He picked out the example of Agen, who had one red card and two yellow cards in Northampton, the two Biarritz boys who had been suspended the week before away to Leinster, and how we conceded nearly 30 penalties in Edinburgh.
He added that the French players love the comforts of home, knowing the dressing-room, knowing the pitch, knowing the crowd, and playing for the crowd.
They're used to a certain type of hotel and a certain type of food. This was all something Toulouse had tried to change last year, and we won away to Newport and Edinburgh, as well as winning a lot of French championship games away, and then the final in Dublin.
That afternoon we watched a video of the Leeds game. We don't seem to have clicked as a team yet, but I'm sure that when we do someone is in trouble. We're playing a French championship game against Grenoble this Friday which means we have to make the 600 km trip on Thursday.
We then play Perpignan on the 30th, a Tuesday, and the following Saturday Biarritz,so we've three games packed in over Christmas, which should make a big difference when we resume the European Cup.
TUESDAY
Another two hard sessions. We're putting in the work now. I asked Fabien Pelous if he was feeling better and started slagging him for missing the Leeds match and leaving me in the lurch. He told me it was the first time sickness had kept him out of a match in his whole career.
He said that learning the lineout calls and all that wasn't so important. Mental toughness is what matters "and you've got that". It was good to hear that from Fabien, a guy I would have huge respect for.
WEDNESDAY
I bumped into Yann Delaigue in the room where we get our training gear. He showed me a fanmail he had received, from a girl, which included a white g-string with a picture of Clement Poitrenaud on the front, and asking him to get it autographed by Clement. All the boys had a great laugh out of it when he showed it to them in the dressing-room. It was the first time they'd ever seen a request like this.
We had another hard session. That's five in three days. In the afternoon I finished off a bit of Christmas shopping and today we travel to Grenoble.
So I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, especially to family and friends who we won't be seeing over Christmas this year.
(Trevor Brennan's regular European Cup column can be read on the ERC website, which is at www.ercrugby.com)
In an interview with Gerry Thornley
