Nearly there, now. The waiting is almost over — I’ve found the past couple of weeks have dragged, to be honest. Watching the Argentina v France game on Friday night, if somebody had come in and said we were on in 10 minutes, I’d have been ready onfor it there and then.

There’s nothing compares with actually being out here, with the games on television and everything. I was down in the team-room half an hour before kick-off on Friday night, lying on the ground before our big TV screen. All the drums and then the singing of anthems — the adrenalin starts to flow.

People will wonder what the result means for us, how France will react now that they absolutely have to win in Paris on Friday week. You can put whatever spin you want on it. I just want to get out there and do the business.

Wednesday

There’s a banner saying “Bienvenue”, a local dignitary, a few schoolkids and a couple of Ireland fans waiting for us as we walk into the arrivals area at Bordeaux Merignac airport. The local snappers hand us all red French berets and get busy. I manage to pick up a couple — they’ll do grand for my parents when they come to France for Munster matches in the future.

It’s been a pretty painless trip. All our baggage was checked through at Dublin in the morningand we were whisked through an entrance I hadn’t usedbeen through before. It’s a short hop compared with 2003, about 90 minutes, so we travel in our number ones, taking care to straighten ties on arrival.

The other difference from Australia is that this France is so clearly a rugby country. Whenever we walked down the street in Melbourne in Ireland gear, the only people that came up to us were Irish. Here, as we drove in from the airport in our branded bus, the locals were waving and honking their horns, which was kinda cool. And they say Bordeaux isn’t even a big rugby town. Rugby is all over the newspapers and magazines.

I’m not sure how many Irish are in town at this stage. Micksy, Timmy and Squidggy, three of my mates from Young Munsters, are on their way, and are thinking of hiring a camper van. They’ll have a few stories to tell.

My parents will be here for Sunday. It gives me great comfort knowing my parents are in the crowd. No matter how nervousI am, at least I know my dad is 10 times worse.

It’s early evening by the time we check in at the Sofitel Bordeaux Lac. It’s a fair way gout of town but the facilities are first class. We have a huge team room one floor beneath our bedrooms, a big gym alongside, a TV room with six or seven couches, and a snack room. Roy Keane would approve. We’ll even have Willie Bennett’s hydrotherapy van — he brought it over on the ferry earlier in the week. It’s now branded and satisfies every health and safety law. regulation.The lads can’t get enough of Willie’s van.

It’s a quiet enough evening. We have dinner at around 7.30, the same sort of stuff as at home, if cooked slightly differently. I finally put my alarm to French time — can’t be late for our first RWC training session.

Thursday

It’s amazing what blue skies and a few extra degrees of heat can do to you. When the hooter goes at the end of morning training at Stade Bordelais, nobody is in the mood to stop. Everyone was doing extras. The forwards who weren’t doing drop-offs were doing more defence and there were little skills groups on another part of what is a fabulous surface. They had to sound the hooter again to get everyone on the bus.

On the way there, we learnt a bit more about this part of the world from Denis Leamy and Neil Best, our two-man Area Information Committee.

Really useful stuff, such as the fact that like the fact that Bordeaux city has a population of 213,000, although the greater Bordeaux area is home to 630,000. A pint of Guinness costs seven euro, but only ¤4.50 during happy hour, which is between seven and nine every day except Sunday, when the discount runs from but between3pm to 9pm Sundays.

We also learn a taxi into town costs ¤15 euro but that there is a casino beside our hotel. Rumour has it a few of our fellas made a killing in Melbourne four years ago.

We’ve a load of different committees, some of them just for the sake of having them, some of them actually important to the day-to-day operation. Communications and technology manager is Marcus Horan, with responsibility for broadband, phone cards, roaming charges, adaptors and plug-in mosquito repellants. How do you get an outside line? Ask Marcus.

It’s a tough enough job. He was given got it a few years ago and hasn’t lost it since.

The good thing about being on the senior players committee is that you keep a handle on who gets which job. The young blokes tend to get messy stuff such as laundry, whereas we get cushy numbers. Proper order. Years ago, Richard and Paul Wallace used to clean the team bus and this has become a job for life for the Wallaces. At least David has Paddy Wallace to help him these days. We have five or six players who are known as Rala’s helpers — Rala is Paddy O’Reilly, our bag man and father confessor. We’ve made Quinny captain of Rala’s Helpers and that keeps him happy.

We’re pretty close-knit at this stage. We even gave each other gifts especially for the World Cup. Personal endorsement deals really came in handy for some fellas. Rog gave us all Newbridge silver cuff-links and pens, while D’Arcy got fabulous MP3 players from Phillips. At the other end of the scale, John Hayes brought along cans of Adidas deodorant, while Stephen Ferris gave everyone water pistols. Mine was boxer shorts from Elverys. Guys that don’t bring anything will be fined appropriately.

We don’t want to leave the coaching staff out of things, so someone devised a daily ritual for the tournament called Ask Taints. It’s where we test the researching ability of our kicking coach, Mark Tainton, who gets asked one general knowledge question every morning and has to come back to us with the answer at dinner. Today’s poser came from D Hickie of Ranelagh and it was as follows: What are the five main differences between Christianity and Islam? He’ll have a fair bit of research to do over the next while.

It was a busy enough day for everyone — training, media, weights and lineouts. Lineouts went really well, it’s great to have a full pack jumping against you, with Malcolm and Quinny mimicking the same offensive and defensive lineouts as the teams we’re going to play against in the tournament. A good first day all round.

Friday

Things tend to slow down by Fridays in match-week. We do all our heavy work Monday and Tuesday. So I go back to bed after a late breakfast — with a nine o’clock kick-off against Namibia, the idea is to train your body to be at its most energetic in the evening. We have light training in the afternoon and then, yes, it’s back to bed. I could go in to check out Bordeaux and have a cup of coffee but then again, we’re not here for a cultural experience. Rest is vital.

There were about 16 of us in the team room for the France v Argentina game. I watched the second half in the video analysis area with Mervyn Murphy.

There wasn’t much running rugby but it was a brilliant game to watch. The Argentinians had a game-plan and they stuck to it with serious intensity. Every Garryowen they put up was chased like crazy. Any 50:50 ball, they were over it. And when they were in scoring range, they gave it everything to get points on the board.

They were cute in that they didn’t try to run slow ball against France’s hard-line defence. So they kicked, chased hard and won a lot of ball back. What we can learn from their performance is what can happen if you start well against France. The French always seem to get a better start than us — think of Croke Park, Paris last year and even the quarter-final in 2003. But if you stop them getting a rhythm, they can get frustrated. On Friday, they started forcing things, going for the extra pass when it wasn’t necessary. Then, when they went for pick-and-go and one-out runners, they were playing into Argentina’s hands.

All in all, the way Argentina played wasn’t that much different from the way England played in the 2003 World Cupfour years ago. Okay, England may not have kicked quite as much ball as Argentina did on Friday, but they basically stopped the oppo from playing, kicked for territory and took their opportunities. It can be a simple game at times.

Saturday

Bonus time — there’s nobody in the queue for a massage table in the morning so I get a good hour with David RavinsWillie Bennett. The good thing about massages at this stage of the week is that they can’t work you too hard, so I get to relax with a book.

It’s another quiet day. I might do some skills work with Brian McLaughlin later on but mostly it will be spent in front of the telly, watching the various games. There’s a real sense of the tournament being up and running now.

I suppose last night’s result puts extra pressure on us to rack up the points against Namibia. To be honest, that’s what we’d been planning anyway. We know from the last tournament that they’ll be very committed, especially in their first game. But we need to win emphatically. It’s as simple as that.

It’s something Brian talks about this a lot. You show a team respect by doing everything at 100% for 80 minutes, no matter what the scoreline is or who you’re playing. He mentioned the way the Australians dealt with Namibia four years ago and that struck a chord with all the lads when he said it.

We were good against them in bad conditions last time — we put 60-odd points on them if memory serves — but there probably was another gear in us. We need to find those gears in these two games, so it’s not hard to go looking for them against France and Argentina. Bring it on.

ps: Keep the faith, Bobby.