STAMINA, determination, patience and good preparation. And that's just about getting to New Zealand, never mind what's needed to win a Rugby World Cup. The Irish squad were due to arrive in Queenstown in the early hours of Thursday morning, Irish time, completing a marathon 35-hour trip from Dublin that required stops in Heathrow, Dubai and Sydney.
Your humble correspondent was ahead of the posse, however, leaving Irish shores on Sunday evening and arriving in New Zealand on Tuesday afternoon, local time, to prepare diligently for the squad's touchdown in Queenstown.
And it actually took a couple of hours and one less flight that Declan Kidney and his players needed, even if we did skip Monday, August 29. Still, 33 hours, it's some test of the aforementioned virtues and not helped by the journey beginning with a snotty check-in lady at Dublin Airport whose relish for penal luggage allowances left this passenger and his travelling companions with a sour taste in the mouth and a sense of foreboding before we had even boarded a plane, let alone heard: “Cabin crew, doors to automatic, cross check”.
So, how to fill so long a period of time whilst encased in a pressurised metal tube?
Let's do it by the numbers....
Flight one: Dublin to Abu Dhabi.
Miles: 3684; Travel time: 7 hours 30 minutes.
Movies watched: Two (Source Code – very good; The Boat That Rocked – very funny).
Games of inflight trivia: Three (awful questions, sample: name Leonardo DiCaprio's stepbrother).
Meals: Two (dinner and breakfast).
Screaming babies: Three.
Sleep: Nada.
Stopover one: Abu Dhabi.
Time: 3 hours 30 minutes.
Meals: One.
Mooches around the duty free shops: One.
Less than educated discussions of the Australian psyche: One.
Flight two: Abu Dhabi to Sydney.
Miles: 7506; Travel time: 13 hours 25 minutes.
Movies watched: Two (Thor – ridiculous yet entertaining; Arthur – plain unfunny).
Games of inflight trivia: One (abandoned after game crashed).
Episodes of Big Bang Theory (season three): Six.
Meals: Three (dinner, snack, breakfast).
Screaming babies: None (yippee!).
Sleep: a very reasonable 2 hours.
Stopover two: Sydney Kingsford Smith.
Time: 3 hours 40 minutes.
Meals: One.
Mooches around the shops: Two (lots to see here).
Less than educated discussions about the efficiency of boomerangs: One.
Less than educated discussions about the necessity of wombats: One.
Flight three: Sydney to Queenstown.
Miles: 1205; Travel time: 3 hours 30 minutes
Movies watched: Super 8 (a joy).
Games of inflight trivia: Two (much better questions, sample: what was the English title for Nena's 99 Luft Balloons).
Meals: One.
Final sweep off the Tasman Sea and into New Zealand along the beautiful, tree-lined fjordland of Milford Sound, over the snow-capped Southern Alps and down across Lake Wakatipu into Queenstown: Priceless.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/MnCtlMdo5Gg/post.aspx
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