Cork Champs Dump Out Europe

07h30 Saturday morning in Finglas and John Sheanon pulls up to Collie Byrne's house. In the car are his brother Eoin, Timmy and Collins. The lads were up at 03h30 to get a lift to Charleroi and a 06h50 flight to Dublin. I'd flown in the night before so was spared that pain.

Two things had been on my mind all week though. The first was the football side of the 7's. All that open space and some whippet of a corner forward to deal with. I'm too old for that crap. I should have gravitated to a central holding position at this stage of my career, not to somewhere requiring excessive mobility. The second concern was breakfast. We were all heading to Eoin's. He's from a GAA mad family so i was hoping that it would consist of something suitable for lads playing football a couple of hours later. Not so, fry it was. Great fry at that but a couple of nervous hours ensued whilst I focused on trying to digest it.

Some mild tension was in the air when we arrived at St. Judes. Of the ten lads on the panel, 4 were from Belgium, 4 from The Hague, 1 Lux and 1 Amsterdam. We hadn't a bad team available and as the start-time approached we grew more positive about the whole experience. I can barely remember the names of the teams in the group but we beat the Dublin crowd in the first game and then lost the next three but two were close. From those teams, one beat the other in the C'ship semi whilst the other went on to win the Shield which suggests we had a tough assignment to start with.

7's is horrid. It's surprisingly tactical and the opposition are all seasoned club teams and had trained collectively for this specific outing. We all know each other well so that wasn't a major issue but the nuances of 7's take time to grasp. There's a load of running and you have to really use the rotating subs to give yourself a breather. Also, the keeper can have a major impact out field too. I enjoyed the football side cause it was tough but the game itself I could take or leave.

We got out of our group by virtue of our solitary win which set-up a clash in the Shield with 2009 Cork County Junior Champions, Glanworth. We had already lost one of our main attackers at this stage so were down some firepower. Turned out to be a humdinger but we lost out 6-5 to 4-7 in the end. It concluded what in one sense was a miserable day (result wise) but in another sense, it was enjoyable (playing against quality teams). We play the same lads over and over during the year so to see some fresh faces and not have the usual niggle was good.

The Belgian contingent did ok. It's a strange kind of game because your performance should probably be rated in how much ground you cover and how many options you make but this is more difficult to recognise than traditional judgements of points for/against (in individual sense) or whatever. Collins probably let the side down but he did give us a breather every now and then from his position on the bench!! The self-proclaimed 'best footballer in Europe' was a shadow of his imagination though and by the closing stages of the day he was more use filling water than kicking ball. He was the only Belgian not to score and that’s including Timmy who was in goal!

This type of thing (Europe 7’s) may have a future if more prep is put in but given the time, travel & money commitments we already make, it could be tough to get off the ground.