Ireland sports...

Well, this weekend has turned out to be a very big weekend for sports in Ireland. Friday night, I headed over to the Cork City Rebels soccer match. They were playing Longford Town and were pretty heavily favored. The first half was pretty exciting...I have never seen a soccer match live like this before and we were able to get seats in the second row along the side of the field, so we were only a couple feet from the players. Cork took a quick 2-0 lead in the first half and then sank into a more defensive game the second half, ensuring their victory.

While the game was on in Cork, my buddy from work was listening to the Ireland v. England Cricket match on the radio. Ireland is in the Cricket World Cup for the first time and were trying to beat big rivals England, but ended up coming just short. At the Cork soccer match, the stadium wasn't sold out and that was probably due to another game that was on, the Munster rugby match. Munster is the region's team, so a ton of people were at the pubs watching them play...but they ended up losing pretty handily as well.

After watching and listening to sports Friday night, I headed out to Kerry (near Kilarney) for a round of golf with the Pfizer Golf Society. We played at the Ring of Kerry Golf Club, which was a very scenic golf course, overlooking the mountains and a big lake. The course wasn't in the greatest of conditions, as they are just gearing up for the big golf season, but it was still a good time. My score wouldn't suggest that it was a good time however, as I played pretty terrible golf, which I guess was excusable considering I haven't played in about a year and was using another person's clubs. At least I've used up all my bad shots for a while though, so maybe if I play on the Pfizer 9-hole course over here, I'll do much better. After 6 hours of golfing though, I learned an important lesson: Don't walk 18 holes, carrying your bag, in a brand new pair of golf cleats...unless you want really sore feet and blisters at the end.