Jonathan’s Diary: O’Leary, Oh Rossy And Trimble’s Tackles
In his latest diary entry, Ireland out-half Jonathan Sexton reveals that the squad had a special visitor this week, explains how the Rala drinks-charging culprit has been found and why a soccer session with Andrew Trimble could leave you battered and bruised!
Michael O’Leary came in and spoke to us during the week and I found it very interesting and enjoyable. He is somebody who polarises opinion in terms of how people regard him, but I found his talk to be thought provoking and very funny at times.
He gave us an insight into Ryanair and how he operates in terms of generating publicity.
One thing that resonated was when he suggested he didn’t like the way Irish people accepted mediocrity at times. He maintained that qualifying for finals in sport should not be the ultimate goal but that it should be to go on and pursue outright victory.
He maintained that if you limit your ambition it introduces a ceiling in terms of what you’re trying to achieve.
People may view the Irish team as having underachieved in terms of the last World Cup and that’s something we’re looking to address.
We had our usual game of crazy golf, a high octane four ball, incredible intense and competitive, except when we had to act our age every couple of holes when invited to pose for photographs.
We have recently concluded a thorough investigation into an incident that took place in the team hotel on the night of the postponed game in France when a round of drinks, supplemented by a large and generous tip, was charged to the room of our baggage master, Paddy ‘Rala’ O’Reilly.
No one owned up so the matter was forensically investigated and many suspects were interviewed. The culprit, who would have been way down the list in terms of suspects, was uncovered.
For legal reasons I can’t name him but he plays tighthead prop and his initials are MR! His punishment is pending.
On a completely different topic, I’d like to put on the record the fact that Andrew Trimble is not to be trusted when it comes to tackling in our pre-training soccer warm-up as he is unable to differentiate between the ball and my foot!
He missed the former and kicked the latter which caused 24 hours of concern. We are clarifying the rules for next week’s game.
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