I wrote before about rugby before, about how I didn’t get it, how it made very little sense to me, how surprised I was that the whole country turned into experts on cauliflower ears and Newbridge silverware overnight. And you know what?

Nothing’s changed.

Saturday was the date of my great buddy Lettuce’s hen party. A gaggle of chirruping wimmin travelled to her home in West Cork and gathered in her sitting room, pretty dresses and sculpted hair and coordinating shoes, and screamed at her television, at fellas beating each other around the middle of a big field, at each other, at God and fate and all that bollocks.

“Go on! GO ON! Ah for fuck’s sake, Stringer! He doesn’t have the legs! THE LEGS! Ah Jaysus!”

And I sat, half-shunted into the conservatory with my unpatriotic attitude and unpatriotic cup of coffee, and felt confused, and very much left out.

I need to get into rugby, lads. I need to. My social life is suffering. I have nothing in common with my countrymen, and nothing to talk about in workplace canteens, pubs, taxis… I don’t understand the excitement in watching horse-like lunatics take two strides at a time down a pitch while opposing lunatics grab at their knees. I have no interest in getting political about ticket distribution. I don’t find Brian O’Driscoll manly and heroic. And it’s not that I don’t understand the rules, or the desired result, or the dedication to the level of fitness and bravery required by ogres trying to till a green and level field using other ogres’ heads. It’s not even that I don’t like team/field sports. I love me a bit of football (I refuse to say soccer, but you may assume I’m talking about soccer). I just don’t have any interest in rugby. I cannot dredge it in myself… Oh, Arseheads! I have been found wanting.

I must change. Can you help? Can you inspire me into giving a shite? Please try (ooh, pun alert!). Seriously, without a healthy interest in rugby in Ireland these days, you’re relegating yourself to the pariah. Or the “dryballs”. And I can’t be doing with that. My balls would be slithery wet, if I had any.