Today is going to be a nerve wrecking day, we’re all getting classified at 10.00. For any player this sends the stress levels through the roof because you could believe in your heart that you were a 2.5 pointer, maybe even a solid 2.0 pointer, but when those classifiers get their hands on you, they could nearly have you walking out of the place as a 4.0 pointer. We decided to send in Philip Gibson and Stephen Hickey first. I was hoping that they’d come out as 3.0 pointers but over an hour later they were still in there. Jesus, what are they at? When Stephen does appear out from there, he was a smiling 3.0R, the R meant that he was to be reviewed, that’s where the classifiers watch you in some of the games that you play before deciding on your final classification. Philip, on the other hand, was a different matter. The puss on him as he left the classifiers room meant that there was no need for words, he was a 3.5R. He said that they were even talking of 4 points. If that happens then he’s out of the game. Christ, that can’t happen, sure the man only has his right hand working properly, how could he be pointed out of the game?

The rest of us went in to get our classifications done and came out more or less with what we expected. John Finn was a 3.0R, I was a 2.5R, Garrett was a 2.0, Alan Lynch a 1.0, Ray Sweeney a 0.5 and John McCarthy was a 0.5R. They did say that John Finn had a lovely set of pecks. So Manchester United have Becks and the Irish Wheelchair Rugby team have “Pecks”. We had training again at 2 in the afternoon. The picture on the left shows Philip after his classification ordeal. "We are not amused."

The welders had arrived and started working on the chairs that needed adjusting. They weren’t the quickest in the world and they moaned more in one afternoon than John McCarthy would do in 3 days. Give me a Paddy welder any day, the kind that will get the job done, have the crack while doing it and be shouting for the next one before the weld had cooled on the previous chair. Fair play to Nicholas Sweeney though. Ray’s dad, Nick, got in amongst the welders and made his own recommendations on the best way to go about the adjustments and by the end of the day we were nearly in the comfort zone with our chairs. He was knackered at the end of the day.

Wednesday night was taken up with the Opening Ceremony. It went ok but we just wanted to get all this out of the way and get down to the real business. That would come tomorrow morning.