The Duckworth Lewis Method have penned an alternative national anthem at the behest of the Irish Times.
A zillion times better than that awful tosh which gets played before Brian O’Driscoll the boys murder the opposition – well, except in Paris – ‘Ireland, Ireland!’ features the following choice couplets:
“Ireland, Ireland, damp sod of earth

Lost on the surf of the North Atlantic.

Ireland, Ireland, mountains and mist,

Vodka and chips, it’s so romantic.


Joyce and Heaney, Beckett and Wilde,

Bill O’Herlihy, Dunphy and Giles,

Evans, Hewson, Mullen and Clayton,

Westlife and Jedward the pride of our nation!


Ireland, Ireland, once we were poor,

Then we were wealthy; now we are poor again.

Cows and horses, donkeys and sheep,
Munster and Leinster, Connacht and ******.


Chinese, Polish, Africans too,

Doing the jobs we don’t want to do.

An Irish stew, a nation of nations,

Working for peanuts in petrol stations.


Ireland, Ireland, you are the best

Place to the west of Wales and Scotland.

Sometimes it’s heaven, sometimes it’s hell,

But I’d rather be Irish than anything else.”