In Ireland English no speak!

After my early brush with the hoodie, Dublin welcomed me like a long lost brother, everybody happy to help.

And it was help - or the lack of concentration when being helped - that would lead to an interesting journey to Dalymount Park last night.

A couple of miles north of the city centre at best, I thought public transport might be the way forward in the form of one of Dublin’s countless buses.

The hotel receptionist could not have been more pleasant, giving me the run down on times, bus number, street location in which to get the right bus to the ground.

The 38A off Hawkins Street, a ten-minute stroll from my hotel.

But in truth after the early words of his advice of ‘just tell the driver where you’re going and he’ll tell you where to get off’, I kind of failed to listen.

So to my horror, after queuing and stepping on the bus all relaxed ahead of the game, I asked the driver to do exactly that.

“English, no speak,” came the reply from the Polish driver.

Oh, what now? Hardly anyone was on the bus to ask and all I could remember from the advice was it being a few yards from where you approach a big church where the road forks either side.

No sooner had we left than we came to such point and from the empty bus, I quickly jumped off.

But with no sign of the ground, I asked another more than helpful local and he gave me simple enough directions for the final MILE on foot.

And upon reaching another, bigger church, on a fork in the road, I noticed the floodlights yards away. I’d got the wrong church.

It was a pleasant enough evening, I suppose, to be pounding the streets of Dublin.

But lesson learned when it comes to directions. Take it all in, don’t take shortcuts.

I’m just glad I left three-and-a-half hours early, otherwise it would have been a bit of a sprint uphill to the ground.

Mind you reflecting on the game, would it have been such a loss had a never got there?