One more question: Is Giles a fit person to take a training session?

Skerries 1st XV v Marist Napier - 22nd November, 2003 at Holmpatrick.

Skerries 34
Napier Marist 10

The welcome home accorded to the Napier Pilgrims after their Irish sojourn is unlikely to have been as fraught with questioning as that given to the All Blacks on their return from Australia.

And, unlike John Mitchells role as head of the Hakamen, Joe Kelly's position as commander-in-chief and general factotum of the Napier - Skerries axis is assured.

Granted, the Old Boys - Marist outfit lost the inaugural, ground breaking joust with Lord Holmpatricks men. That game came in the wake of a whistle-stop no-frills expedition into bandit country. An itinerary that takes in Cashel, Killorglin, Connemara and Derry is the Irish equivalent of the Trans-Siberian line, with all that implied in terms of endurance and hazard. Add in "Bad Bob" Moorehouse's lavish reception at the Guinness Centre and the callous scheduling of the match dinner to precede the match and Kiwi stamina, prodigious as it is, was bound to hit the buffers somewhere.

Shay McGuinness's kick-off whistle on Saturday, therefore, was like a medical mans percussion hammer, employed to test the vital reflexes of the patients. The response, incredibly, was sharp and spirited on both sides and, in contrast to the scratch-penny strategies of A.I.L. days, the play ebbed and flowed from one end to the other with delicious abandon.

We even saw one of those groin-grazing between-the-legs passes for which Carlos Spencer now holds the patent. Enterprise was the order of the day with tries coming sufficiently often to vindicate it. For spectators it was a feast……marred only by the subsequent discovery that ex-president Crowe had been invading their image rights by surreptiously pointing a phallic lens in their direction, court case to follow.

Of considerably more importance than the result was the multiplicity of questions thrown up by the afternoon, why does club captain Beggs not liberate himself more regularly from his anger-management problems? When he is free in the mind he is a classically effective runner. And why has Denny not been afforded a decent opportunity to show his wares at the top level? The young scrum-half gave a critic-proof performance here. Is there any chance of enticing O'Sullivan Derek back to the fold? His loss to the club over the years has been incalculable, but the aplomb that it is not too late to benefit from his offensive instincts. Give him money, offer him furtive social privileges. Do anything, but get him cack.

One more question: Is Giles a fit person to take a training session? The precise instructions on how to get to Dublin Airport by road led to one of our visitors running aground at Rush Harbour on Friday evening.

The victim of Giles's skewed semaphore was Blake Finnegan, the doyen of the turning squad and still, at 37 years of age, a polished and combative No 9. But his own view is that his playing career has now reached it's terminus and the consignment of his boots to the dressing-room bin at the finish on Saturday was a symbolic gesture all the more poignant for its brusqueness.

Even if he never again rifles a ball away from the base of a scrum, Blake will forever be a part of the solid fraternity that now exists between Skerries and Napier. Saturday's game was a celebration of 21 years of exchange and the benefit to the goats in that period has been immense. Take a brief look at the roll-call of distinguished visiting ambassadors: Primrose, Feral in his desire to reach the try-line; Donaldson, Chairman both on and off the field; Corkery, the rusty combustible; Bennett, both percussive and cultured; Hamilton, you won't find him in Wetherby's list of thoroughbreds; Welch, lethal, but suitably so; Dennehy, lippy but a consummate finisher. Put these fellows sitting down side by side and you might think you were in the waiting room of a methadone clinic.

But individually each has brought a flourish to Fingal and each has helped to implant some of the atavistic Kiwi virtues in the local psyche. It is these qualities of focus and resolution that Brassington and Giles will hope to tap into as the All Ireland League gains momentum.

And, incidentally, Blake, the right of way through Mrs O'Neills kitchen and hall is now closed.