Last weekend I attended the Heineken Cup Final 2008 between Munster and Toulouse. In short, the experience was incredible. Following is an account of the weekend, one of most memorable of my life.

I left work at the usual time of 5pm on Friday 23rd May 2008. Except this time I had a bit more of the Friday feeling than usual. I was finally on my way to Cardiff for the European Rugby Cup Final between Munster and Toulouse. I had bought tickets way back before the season began and Munster had come a long way, fighting to come top of the pool of death and beating both Gloucester and Saracens in away quarter and semi finals respectively. Now they faced the giants of European rugby, Toulouse, in a very fitting end to their European Cup campaign.

My excitement heightened as I passed through security and noted that the vast majority of travellers that evening were dressed in red Munster jerseys sporting the familiar white Toyota text. As I approached my gate, it became clear to me that supporters were trying to get to anywhere at all in the UK that they could, regardless of distance from Cardiff. I presumed they would later worry about getting to Cardiff from Glasgow, Newcastle or Manchester or wherever they were flying to. It never ceases to amaze me how determined Munster fans are to get to a match.
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I can’t believe it! I actually found my charger for my Sony Handycam I have not been able to use the thing for the past three months! The most annoying thing is that it was in a bag FULL of cables which I had previously checked at least 5 times… So if I looked harder those 5 times I would have had it ages ago! The funny thing is that I was actually looking for my headphone mixer and after about 5 minutes of looking for that I found the charger! Woohoo! Expect to see loads more rediculous footage and Gaffbhala malarky! Plus a music video for our latest Sonic theme song cover (this time Emerald Hill Zone). Check out the last one we did here!

Ok ok ok… this is just bizarre. Any of you who know us will have heard us utter the phrase ‘Chechens’ now and again. Before I go any further, let me give you a brief history of how this phrase came about and what it means.

A long long time ago I was sitting in a bar (how many stories start with this sentence?!) with Ali and his mate Dave from college amongst others. I noticed that Dave would regularly say “chat to you” whenever he was saying goodbye to somebody. However he didn’t pronounce it quite that eloquently. He kind of said it so fast that is came out as “chacha”. I thought this was hilarious and I took it on myself, saying chacha to people as a farewell.

Fast forward several years to gaffbhala where the phrase ‘chacha’ was adopted by Ali, Dan and Wig too. Its use was even expanded and the word chacha began to be uttered as an exclamation. For example, if Dan were to mess up a really easy section on Guitar Hero, I might say “Oh! Chacha!”. So anyway, as with most slang, the more we said the phrase, the more it morphed into other phrases. Some of the changes it went through were Chechnya, Chechnyan Jazz, Chechnens and finally ended up at simply ‘Chechens’.

So imagine my surprised last night when I was around at Emsy and her mum’s house and I noticed an article lying on the kitchen table about Chechens! I could hardly believe my eyes! So of course I took a quick snap with my phone and here it is. For everybody to enjoy in all its glory. Whatever next?!

On Friday morning a bunch of us (Ali, Lap, Lex, Mick, Róisín and Myself) are heading over to Minehead over in the UK for the music festival, All Tomorrows Parties! The festival is curated by the fantastic band, Explosions in the Sky! All Tomorrows Parties happens many times a year all over the world, and each time a different band takes on the role of inviting their favourite bands to come and play! So if you really like the band hosting, you’re bound to like the rest of them. Some highlights are: Battles, Broken Social Scene, Dinosaur Jr, Mono, Four Tet and De La Soul!

The festival is held in Butlins Holiday Centre over in Minehead and apparently all the activities will be available to us! So we better make sure we pack our swimming gear as there is a huge water park there! We’re sleeping in a six bed self catering apartment in the resort too which will feel very odd at a festival! So tent fun for us!

We’ve got an early flight on Friday and a mid afternoon flight back on Monday so we’ll all be getting two four day weeks in a row Hate that people in employment!

Oh yeah! We bought a BBQ up in Dunnes Stores last sunday! Tested it out the next day and it works a treat BBQ + Sun + Tuborg - Work = Happy Times! Click below for some photos!

A goof friend of Gaffbhala was in Japan and came across this in the street. Grioch is big news over there!

I’ve been playing alot of GTA the past few days. And so have lot of other people! Every single person signed in to Xbox Live on my friends list has been either playing GTA or was set to away the past few days (well except for Mike who just plays COD4 all the time).

Tuesday 29th (Launch Day)

1pm - 2pm
Went to my mate Brian’s apartment for lunch and got to see GTA first hand for the very first time. Gave it a bash and was amazed by the level of detail and sheer scope of the game.

5pm - 3:30am
Left work early as I came in early. Got home at around 5pm and put the disc straight in as soon as I could turn off the gaff’s alarm. Played solidly hour after hour letting Ali have a tiny go here or there. I progressed through the single player and also gave multiplayer a bash with my homies of choice, Metonym, SenatorWilliams and Zyg0t3 (thats Paddy, Rhys and Damo to the non nerds). Damo and Paddy left multiplayer and it was just myself and Rhys. We went back to playing single player while leaving our headsets on so we could still talk to eachother! Then all of a sudden BANG! it was 3:30am! Felt a bit guilty about my sleep patterns so went to bed. All in all got off the couch about three or four times. Once to reheat lasagne and the others were toilet breaks.

Wednesday 30th

9am - 5pm
Could not stop thinking about playing GTA. It effected my work performance and the ability to program in PHP.

5:30pm - 9:30pm
Played solidly when I got home from work. Started with some multiplayer with Paddy, then onto single player. Gave Ali a go while I made some pasta. We called over to Paddy’s and said hello. We both agreed it was wierd seeing eachother in person as we’ve just been “gang banging” together the past few days (that sounds pretty dirty!). Paddy and Damo started a multiplayer session and we legged it home to join

11pm - 3am
Rushed home from Paddy’s and jumped into Free Roam mode for about an hour. The lads went to bed at around midnight so I carried on myself and progressed through the single player story. Managed to get quite far too, unlocked a new Island, went to a comedy club and watched a three minute Ricky Gervais comedy sketch! Ha! Stand up comedy in a video game, where else would you find something like that other than GTA!

Thats it for the moment! Going to rush straigh home from work and meet up with Rhys on the streets of Liberty City.

Let me take you back to last August. It was before the European Rugby Cup (aka The Heineken Cup) 2008 had even begun. I noticed that tickets for the final were on sale and decided to buy a pair. They were expensive enough however I knew I would be able to sell them for a profit on ebay if Munster didn’t make the final. To be honest, I wasn’t that hopeful. They hadn’t done great the season before and they were in the toughest group by far with the likes of London Wasps, Clermont Auvergne and Llanelli Scarlets. But anyway, they came top of the grop and qualified for a very difficult away quarter final to Gloucester. But I now feel bad for ever doubting the boys in red because they went to Gloucester and put it to them, securing an emphatic semi-final meeting with Saracens.

However, although Saracens technically shouldn’t pose much of a threat to Munster, the match was again an away fixture and Munster were certainly put to the test. The Saracens put up a much bigger fight than Gloucester had and Munster found themselves furiously defending their line only two points ahead with 10 minutes to go. But it was then that Munster’s experience really showed. This was Munster’s 7th Semi-final in 9 years and Saracens’ first. Munster were able to hold out the full 80 minutes, putting them into their 4th Heineken Cup final.

Munster now meet Toulouse in the Millenium Stadium on Saturday 24th March to decide who will be the rugby champions of Europe for the 2007/08 season. My tickets arrived in the post last Monday and I’ve booked a flight to London Gatwick for the Friday evening before the match. I’ll spend the night with Aily and then the two of us are booked on a coach up to Cardiff on the Saturday morning. We’re also staying with Aily’s friend Jodie which saves us having to book into a 5-star hotel - the only accommodation left in Cardiff for that weekend!

The match should be epic with the two biggest teams in European rugby battling it out for the most coveted of rugby prizes. My tickets aren’t the best in the stadium but there will be big screens in the ground and I’m sure the atmosphere will more than make up for the lack of being close to the pitch. In any event, the Millenium Stadium’s roof can be opened or closed depending on the weather guaranteeing me a dry match. The tickets are in my pocket, my jersey has been ironed and I’ve been listening to ‘The fields of Athenry’ on my mp3 player non-stop. Bring it on!!!

On Sunday morning I awoke relatively early considering I’d been on the booze in Clare’s house the night before. I decided to play some Guitar Hero II which I haven’t done in a while and also went for the extreme version (playing through headphones). I was on a particularly good roll and managed to clock up 99% in ‘Can’t you hear me knocking?’ by The Rolling Stones. The pics below prove it and if it wasn’t for a random hand spasm during the first verse, I would have got 100%! Still, it’s something to work towards…

Here are some more pics of Old Gregg