Team Details 2003

The Trainspotters	The Liabilities
Senior Men	Division 3 Men
Ivan 'Superstar' Stuart (Capt.)	Liam 'The BullShit' O'Connor (Capt./Lord)
Daniel 'Snuffy' Shanahan	Pearse 'Pee-Arse' Cronin
Peter 'The Bolt' Burke	Mark 'Toty' Biggane
Trevor 'Your Host' O'Donoghue	Donal 'Shy Guy' O'Connor
Padraig 'The Shadow' Shanahan	Eoin 'Master' O'Sullivan
Eoghan 'The Sweeney' McSweeney	Mike 'Chimp' Horan
Darragh '2Tall' McCarthy	Cormac 'Begbie' Lyons
Paul 'Dyank' McCarthy	John 'The Bull' Lyons
Kevin 'Team Jock' Lynch	Ruairdhi 'Philosopher' Daly
-	Declan 'SilverTongue' Cronin
COACH :: Frank 'Ass Coach' O'Rahilly . [ & Mick 'The Gaffer' (in spirit!)

The Christmas Review....

It's been an eventful couple of weeks! There's been a bit of basketball played, a bit of beer drank, a few birds and a lot, quite a lot, of messiness!

It all started Christmas Eve, when spotters from all over the globe converged in Castleisland for the season of blagarding that was about to ensue. The Ass Coach decided that it would actually be a "good idea" for us to get some training in so we headed out to the basketball "arena" in Ballymac! This was comical, farcical, even dangerous!

With lads looking like Titanic survivors after 15 minutes of running around, I decided that the best form of relief was light relief - something funny! I then gracefully took to the court, in my new "Jordans" and absolutely nothing else! No-one would pass me the ball, no-one would mark me, a suggestion that perhaps we should do this before the final was met with a stern "No".

With this shambles of a training session behind us, we all met up for Christmas Eve and then went our separate ways for Christmas dinner.

Then the games began on Stephens Day with the match that we knew would determine our entire blitz!

The Godfathers, or the Mickey Mouse Mafia, have some lovely gear, they have the shooter tops, the have the jerseys, the shorts, the hoodie's, etc. They are missing only one thing - Basketball. They would like you to believe that they are the Trainspotters, however they could not be further from it! The match started well for us taking a 7-2 lead as I recall.

The MMM had nothing really, Brian Shanahan was too busy trying to do it all himself after Snuffy put a €50 bet with him that we'd beat them by 10 points, and after Snuffy and Padraig had both riled him physically he grew that all too familiar scowl all over his face and was out of the game really.
Pierse McCarthy was their other only real threat, and for a man that looked like he was after one too many Happy Meals throughout the course of the year, he was moving Coast-to-Coast fairly gingerly.
The Don, Charlito, Vito and many other such… gimps were nowhere to be seen really. Pat Fitz (Vito by the way… it's so obvious now that I think of it!) was lorded by Peter Burke under the boards and was never really a threat.

But the real highlight of this game for me came when the Don tried to throw his weight around the place. Darragh "Too Tall for his Haircut" McCarthy was impeded by the don after winning a rebound and the don tried to pull him to the floor, Darragh brushed him aside and the don saw red.
Did he "pop a cap in his ass"? No. Did he put him in cement shoes? No. Did he leave him swimming with the fishes? No. "What did he do?" I hear you cry. Well, he became very brave and ran up behind Darragh and shouldered him in the back! HARD! As he was then running past Darragh, staring him out of it - hard as nails now mind! - Darragh drew a kick at his legs and swept them from underneath him. I just remember watching his face, hard as nails staring Darragh out of it, next thing… woops, hit the ground.

The funniest part of the whole thing was that these boys are "big men" when they're out and about downtown, however as soon as something might even come close to kicking off, I hear Brian Shanahan saying to the ref - "He kicked a little boy!" I nearly keeled over when I heard it! Big Men when they're out, Little Boys when they're down! What age is he, 19 or something, for fuck sake!

We won by 8 points anyway, not enough for Snuffy to claim his €50 but at least we kept an unbeaten record against these pretenders.

So it was on high spirits that we headed for town on St Stephens night.

The next day (Saturday) we played the Barbarians. An awful shit-kicking altogether (29-12) and I'd say the most points we've ever put up in any division or in any game! Usually scoring even close to that is kept to the semi-finals. A few three pointers from Ivan left us all knowing that he would be missed in the semi.

The Liabilities were fantastic on the day in question and after a disappointing start in the early game they lost 12-6 after playing some super basketball for a bunch of lads who were pretty much all tattooed the night before. Also the turn up was fantastic, 9 lads at 10.30am was unprecedented! I even made it down myself.

I've also decided that the white side of the jerseys is bad luck and will never see the light of day again.

Once the Liabilities pulled on the sweat covered jerseys for the third game of the day, the blue side made all the difference. The lads were superb, and every one of them got in on the act. Liam the Liability (or Liam Lord of the Liabilities) was on the score sheet, Lyons with what he tells me was his first score ever in the blitz, and all the lads were great on what was the first win for the B team in the blitz. Well done lads, full marks to Snuffy aswell for his coaching efforts.

& that evening, finally… it was time.... Pub Golf tee-off ! - & for photos and a full review see the Pub Golf 2003 section of the site.

Sunday was a day off at the blitz. Don't remember what happened that night, anyway, we definitely went out and I'm sure it was fairly messy!

Next day (Monday) was a semi-final and our first meeting against the Thirsty Scholars (who have a great web site by the way) and we definitely didn't want to lose to another, lets face it, group of pretenders! Needless to say, we pissed on these lads, they were a bit better than the Godfathers alright, and actually took a bit of a lead at the start, which was the necessary kick up the hole we needed. I went in, crashed the boards, dominated, call it what you will, I was fantastic!

Unfortunately, it was after this game that the rigorous schedule of being a Trainspotter kicked into gear again. Photo shoots, Interviews, it's all just part of being a Trainspotter! Tired after an exhausting game, as can be seen from the photo on the St Marys website where Snuffy's jersey is soaked through, and mine… well looks like it was pulled out of the dryer moments before! We were exhausted, but still, obviously, able to belt out the one-liners faster than Pat Hartnett could jot down so we said "Listen, gimme that piece of paper and I'll give you an interview!" So we did, just to get out of there, just hectic again really!

For those of you who haven't seen this rare interview with the Trainspotters, check out www.stmarysbasketball.com for their website and check out the "Christmas Blitz", then try "Trainspotters".

Tuesday, Final Day...

"We have never lost a blitz final and we're not going to start now", that was pounded into our heads before the game, that and tactics. I don't' know, I don't ever really listen to the tactics, but I'm led to believe that this year they were fantastic! Full court press was our chosen weapon on the day, we always seemed to discuss defensive stuff but never really offensive stuff. I guess that's because really its just magical when we step onto that court, the scores just come from somewhere.

We didn't do anything for the final this year, that was part in protest for those imp-faced-tossers from the Mickey Mouse Mafia stealing our bit last year, and partly because I think this year people saw a more mature Trainspotter team in front of them this year.

We decided to let the basketball do the talking this year and really, to put a smile on our own faces. And believe me, we were grinning from ear to ear when we beating a scoreless, even hapless, Shanahans Bar team at half time! No score by them in 10 minutes of basketball.

We didn't keep them scoreless anyway, but we did win the game. Snuffy was fantastic and got MVP, and was well deserved of it. He was chosen as vice-captain before we went out because he had been brilliant throughout the blitz, and he earned it out on the court putting in a great performance that was rewarded by the blitz committee with the award.

Then, after the game, it all kicked into gear again. Photo shoots, interviews, autographs and of course the paparazzi were all over the place! I could barely get into my car and drive away without hitting one of the fuckers!

The black tape! What was the black tape for? Why did ye wear the black tape? Will you sleep with me?

These are just a variety of the questions that were put to me in the hotel that night after wearing a piece of black tape on our jerseys. The answer is quite complicated, it was basically just because we knew that the spotters who are away would see pictures of the final and we just wanted to let them know that we were thinking of them. Even Ivan ALL the way up there in Dublin, who was unable to be there due to a scheduling conflict. It turned out to be a bit more than that on the day but few of us were aware of that until well after the game.

That night the merits of being a spotter were there for everyone to be seen, Paul was "worming" his way around the dance floor, Snuffy's pants were unfortunately kept stead fast around his waist as Relationship Dan was in full effect, Burke was once again in "deep conversation" with a certain lass and too busy to talk to the lads, I was FUBAR as par the course - fucked up beyond all recognition, Lynch was pissed on the smell of it again, don't remember too much about the night as a whole!

Anyway, that's all for now.

Basically, Trainspotters, Christmas, Blitz, Drink, Frankfurt, New Years… (whistle)!

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