A dream of the day that we’ll beat this shower of fuckers and they’ll go back to where they belong, with nothing only the memory of how our boys have thrashed them.

Maurice nods. I reach into my large kit bag. Lads, here’s your bars. I’ll be back in a jiffy. Hold the fort, Maurice.

In the clubhouse I stick my fingers down my throat and with a heave comes the bile. I flush the toilet. I feel a sense of regret. The first time I allowed myself to vomit up my lunch, I got away with it, despite the cuff ends of my hoodie being streaked with flecks of smoked fish from the chowder I’d downed in Vaughan’s. Jenny knew no different. On holiday, free from the confines of the office, locked into the wilderness of Connemara and its restful arms, I felt a sway like no other sway before. My body had over-indulged and the purging was strange, and yet I was somehow indifferent to it. I risked it twice or maybe three times during our week’s stay. I dry my hands on the crusty towel scrunched in a ball on the sink. Its hardened edges chafe my skin.

Back out on the pitch of woe, the pull of the West is still in me.

Here, lads, have you finished your bars? You lot are as lucky as hell, do you know that? In my day we got oranges cut into quarters and we had to suck on them so hard that the bits of flesh would get rammed in between our teeth. Don’t get me started on energy drinks.

The kids wait.

They didn’t exist, energy drinks.

The lads snort and there is a kind of a release in the air.

Good now, lads, I say. Things are coming on very nicely indeed.

They’re hammering us, Dad, Mikey says.

A hammering is not what we’ll call it, got that. I say, there’s no such thing as a hammering. It’s a day out, a morning away from television. Consider this: you’re lucky to be out here in the air. Now brace yourselves, lads, for the onslaught. We’ll get a few back.

It’s four nil, says Joey.

It’ll be five nil in about two seconds, says Mikey.

It’s a fucking disaster, says Dano, the fat kid.

Any more of that language, Dano, and you’re off, do you hear me?

I tell Joey to blow his nose because he’s always got snot oozing from it and it drives me mad.