The final game if the tour and the culmination of the hospitality. It’s race week in Galway which is just about the biggest occasion on the Irish sporting calendar. The town was bursting with smartly-dressed Irish folks form all four corners of the land, and few from other points around the globe. From one of the chosen haunts of the visiting Sunderland fans (The Fox), we gradually made our way to Terryland Park, where Nick (“That Ewan McGregor stitched me up”) is now commercial manager or some-such, and proceeded to move the ALS stall on for health and safety reasons. To be honest, that was about the only slightly negative event of the night, as Galway treated us to the best of welcomes, with a large beer tent in the car park and the media in great evidence. As we supped our Guinness in the sunshine, a faintly familiar figure joined the queue for the netty – a great big bloke in a suit, but the baseball cap looked slightly out of place. Charlie Hurley was his name, so I took the opportunity to shake his hand before he went in rather than after, and was treated to a smile the width of Galway Bay.

The new stand looks nice, the old stand looks OK, the two ends had no steps, which made spectating fun. Roy rang the changes again, and we lined up with Fulop in goal, Halford and Wallace the little and large fullbacks, and Nosworthy and McShane the central defence. Stokes started wide right, Richardson wide left, and Deano and Etuhu in the middle. Up front were Chopra and Murphy, and the game was barely a couple of minutes old when McShane got in an important block, Noz played the ball out of defence, and Etuhu found Chopra who latched onto the bouncing bal on the edge of the box to guide it cleanly over the keeper. To the lad dressed as if he should have more sense who said “he’s still a Geordie ****” please grow up. We looked the better side, and pressed forward, with Richardson and Stokes shooting over early on as we varied our forward play – Murphy pulling wide left as Richardson cut inside, and Stokes drifting in to support Chopra. Wallace took his turn to fire over the top, much to the consternation of the ad sitting on a house roof across the car park. Stokes found himself on the same spot soon after, but his low effort was easily saved.

The first thirty or so minutes were a fairly tame affair, then it all went a bit hairy. McShane rose to thump a header over the top from a right wing corner, then a clearance was sliced up in the air, and Richardson tried an overhead kick, which missed the ball but caught the big centre half. He reacted by grabbing our man by the throat and it looked as if he might also have thrown a punch, but it was a bit daft considering Rich is less than half his size. We’d barely got calmed down when Stokes kicked one of their lads and got himself booked, then Rich chopped down their right back as he bombed forward, earning himself a yellow card.

Half time came, with impressive drumming and scary flares, so I changed ends just because I could. The visiting fans were a bit subdued, probably as a result of almost a week’s Irish lifestyle, and I commented on this to the couple next to me. It turned out that they’d come from San Francisco and were going on to the Juve game – 11/10 for effort to the pair of them. Yorke and Anderson were warming up in time with the drums, and Galway did what they’d promised to do with a big game against Waterford in two days – replaced the whole team for the second half. We made do with Dwight on for Etuhu, which I almost missed because I was staring at the lad in front of me – a mags shirt with “27 Taylor” on the back. Mad, brave, or just very badly informed? I couldn’t tell, but he came to no harm during the game.

Their under 21s (for that is what they were) looked a bit livelier and a bit less likely to retaliate than their first team, but we looked the calmer side and always likely to show the bit of class needed to increase the score. Murphy flashed a shot wide from the right, Richardson, to a chorus of boos from the Galway fans, saw his corner cleared, and the home side looked to have a break on but we got a tackle in and Yorked looked up to see Richardson in the inside left position and played him in. Our new man beat his marker and fired in across the keeper for the second, and followed it with some pretty over-the-top celebrations.

Murphy then hit the side netting, and Roy decided to make some changes, replacing (not necessarily in this order, but let’s save a bit of time) Halford, Nosworthy, McShane, Stokes, Whitehead, Richardson, Chopra, and Murphy with Kay, Anderson, Collins, Varga, Donoghue, Leadbitter, Connolly, and John. Understandably our shape changed, but it wasn’t long before Galway chucked another five subs. With ten to go, Ward replaced Fulop, and he produced a fine save as we got a bit sloppy at the back. With five minutes or so to go, John found some space on the right and chipped in a nice cross for Connolly to head home from close in, then a couple of minutes later Con returned the favour with a 1-2 and John hit home from just on the box. A good break down the right ended with a curler from Donoghue being well saved, then that was the end of the proceedings.

The records will show it was the most competitive game of the tour because of the bookings, the best win because of the goals, and may well find itself in the Guinness book of records as the game in which 48 players were involved. Text messages from home indicated that the Gordon deal was back on, that there’d be another signing on Thursday – Keano must be doing a lot of telephoning.

So we trooped back into town to sup our final pints of Guinness, watch those who’d won at the races celebrate, and be entertained by Paddy the Punk. Which was nice.

Final Score: 4-0 Sunderland

Man of the Match Wallace and not just because he played the entire game.

Tour over, let’s go home. Thanks Ireland, it’s been a blast.

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