Munster Reigns

If you didn't make it to WJ McBride's Irish Pub over by the racetrack yesterday, or to The Gaf in Waldo - which has the same Setanta package - then you might not have noticed - in Kansas City's around-the-world-sixty-seconds news segment - that Munster have ended years of woe, are champions of Europe.

This is rugby, by the way, and for a lot of people it's a big deal. A really big deal. It's having a bit of an impact on other Irish sports, and on Irish sportsmen.

The only thing worse than ordinary people using sporting analogies in ordinary situations, is sporting people using ordinary analogies in sporting situations. For example if you ask what is next for Munster, now that it has finally won?

What we've achieved is magnificent, team captain Anthony Foley said. It's been a journey, but the journey's not over. This is just another station on the way

So no clues there then to where the end of the journey is, nor even the name of the next station.

Meanwhile Munster fans have been lauded as fans who would go to the ends of the earth for their team, even though they only had to go to Cardiff. It's kind of like leaving Kansas City for the middle of Kansas, which has a far greater claim to being the "ends of the earth".

Don't get me wrong, this is great stuff. I might be a Leinster man, but Leinster rugby people speak weird, so being happy for Munster is easy.