The Luck of the Irish

The Irish never come up short when it comes to bearing a grudge and that’s fine by me. We have been the innocent victims, suffering betrayal and injustice at the hands of powerful neighbours so its no wonder we are a race of romantics, poets and drunks. To our credit, they only broke our hearts once when they sunk even lower than we could have imagined possible.

Most people of a certain age can tell you exactly where they were when the news came through that Kennedy had been shot, Elvis had been found dead on a toilet or Phil Helmuth had made a mistake at a poker table. But absolutely every Irish person has every detail of our darkest day tattooed on his soul lest he ever try to find peace of mind before our martyrs have been avenged.

It all started off optimistically. The invading Irish army gathered together early one morning at a top secret location. The Irish being Irish the secret slipped out after our enemies bought us beer so just about the whole world knew the secret location was O’Sullivans pub in Paris. After seven or eight hours discussing tactics, we headed to the battlefield to support eleven of our finest in their battle against the best the French had to offer. At stake, was a place at the World Cup Finals. The game itself was a shock to even our most diehard comrades. The Irish journeymen were outplaying the thoroughbreds of France in their own backyard and we were on our way to South Africa until Thiery Henry cheated by playing basketball and the ball finished up in our net. Everyone in the stadium saw what had happened except the referee who hadn’t even been in O’Sullivans all day.

The fallout was unreal. Its not often the Irish have the moral high ground so we made the best of it. We whinged like xxxx. Henry became public enemy number one. To be fair to the French, they were pretty embarrassed about the whole thing and didn’t want to win like that. We loved it and were thrilled when the French imploded in South Africa. Never underestimate karma!

Four years later, I was getting ready to go to Vegas for the WSOP (which is more than I could say for our soccer team and the World Cup). I somehow managed to fracture and dislocate my shoulder in Paris which isn’t dreadfully helpful as a buildup. The pain was unreal and I honestly didn’t think it could get any worse. But I was wrong. I was surrounded in the hospital by three doctors who were preparing to pop my shoulder back in when one of them asked “What do you think of Thiery Henry?”