So Ireland’s tournament has properly kicked off last night after the very encouraging performance against Sweden. Big shame we couldn’t hold out for the win but we saw more attacking football in one half than we did in the entire Trap era! Great to see Wes outclassing Zlatan and scoring a beauty. Still loads to play for. C’mon Ireland!

Tomorrow morning I’m joining the Euro 2016 adventure for two weeks! Travelling with my buddy Mark Buchanan from Belfast and we have quite an itinerary…

• 15^th June – fly to Paris and set up base at the campsite near Paris
• 16^th June – drive 4.5 hours to Lyon and go to Northern Ireland v Ukraine match
• 17^th June -drive 5 hours to Bordeaux and go through the pre-match routine with the Boys in Green travelling army!
• 18^th June – go to Ireland v Belgium…still on the lookout for tickets so please contact me if anyone knows of any flying about!
• 19^th June – drive 6 hours back to the campsite base in Paris. Start the recovery!
• 20^th June – continue recovery!
• 21^st June – go to Northern Ireland v Germany in Saint Denis
• 22^nd June – train to Lille for Ireland v Italy
• 23^rd June – Lille downtime
• 24^th June – rest day in Paris
• 25^th – 27^th June – second round…wait and see if Ireland are involved!
• 28^th – fly home L

The plan is to provide a blog describing the French experience the Euros. It’s looking like delays due to heavy security and industrial strikes are going to be unavoidable. We’ll put up with those. Hopefully there will be enough petrol in pumps around the country so we can get where we are going in the rental car! And hopefully we will avoid some of the other issues which have afflicted the country and the tournament, namely floods and hooligans. Hangover and travel permitting I’ll hope to post every day or so and give some flavour of the sights and sounds of this tournament and the mood in the country.

One more sleep…bring it on!