“Took an overnight sleeper from Berne to Vienna, Joe. Cadged a lift on an Easy Singles lorry from there to Bordeaux. Paid two grand for a car, and we are hugging the French coast as I speak to you, Joe

THE INTERNATIONAL travel crisis of the past week brought into sharp focus the half-forgotten time when getting to sports events was quite often a journey into the unknown.

Much was made of the fact Liverpool FC had to travel “overland” to fulfil their fixture in the semi-final of the European B Cup against Atletico Madrid.

Given the plummeting financial stock of that august club, the exercise may have been useful, because the way things are going Steven Gerrard and company will be travelling on the National Express before too long.

But the strangeness of the journey called to mind the grainy film footage when football squads believed themselves to be enjoying the last word in luxury if they were travelling on buses that had fold-out formica tables and individual ash trays. Sometimes a camera man would film the lot of them from the front of the bus, all looking pleased as punch like a group of school kids being brought to Paris for the first time and already engaged in card games that could last anything up to 20 hours.

This was before the era of individual technology, so the players had no choice but to actually talk to one another and come up with amusements to pass the time. It would be fun to witness the look of awed incomprehension that would have passed across the face of Fernando Torres or Javier Mascherano if beleaguered coach Rafa Benitez stood up and suggested, in his raspy way, a game of Charades to pass the time.

The players have become locked into a world where they can leave their McMansions, park their enviable motors at an air strip, board the club jet and arrive at their team hotel without once having to remove their head-phones or lift a piece of luggage.

It is a far cry from the travel itinerary of John Giles, whom Bill O’Herlihy once suggested had journeyed “from Poland to East Germany in a luggage compartment”. It ranked as one of the more astonishing claims made on Irish television and was enhanced by the fact that, rather than elaborate on or deny the story, John Giles just gave one of his enigmatic smiles. It demanded explanation then and still does.

One shudders to think about what the Stasi would have done to a man even as formidable as Gilesy had they found him sandwiched between Eamon Dunphy’s valise and Paddy Mulligan’s bag of ham sandwiches without the correct documentation.

The topic was only mentioned because “the panel” were debating the latest FAI row, sparked by – you’ll never guess – Roy Keane’s acidic observations about the travel arrangements for a match to Andorra. All “da blazers” – the officials and administrative men of the FAI – were travelling up in “first” while the Boys in Green had been sequestered in steerage, among the fans. Now, it might be the difference between first and economy on a flight to Andorra was limited to the option of ice cubes in your yellow-pack vodka and soda. It is not as if the chaps were flying Concorde. But Keane, nothing if not a man of details, was distressed about the leg-room limitations inflicted on his taller colleagues, like Gary Breen and Niall Quinn.

It was said that when the player using the seat ahead of Quinn used the recline option on his chair, Big Niall’s knees actually touched the roof of the cabin. Comfort was minimal.

A year later, when the team headed off to Saipan in preparation for the World Cup, they travelled in much cosier circumstances. And did they thank the boy Roy for it?

But at least they were all in it together. That was the way of things back before sports stars the length and breath of the world started to live lives lavish enough to make a South American dictator envious.

It was not always so. Once, baseball heroes travelled the length and breath of America on trains, smoking tobacco and trading stories with the sportswriters who covered them.

Not so long ago, pretty much every English football player seemed to drive a Ford Capri. Check out the old Shoot! magazines. The camera never lies.

Here in Ireland, the days when players cycled their way across country to play in the big matches at Croke Park have long been romanticised. But they did it, with supporters following behind, sometimes with entire families balanced on the handlebars. Hearing the stories of the Irish stranded in various global outposts of over the past week, it was clear that something of that spirit still exists.

Joe Duffy seemed to hear most of the stories. In that way, the Irish had a distinct advantage over their marooned fellow-travellers from other countries. It is highly unlikely Germans locked down in Ibiza or a party of English ladies taking in a tour of Lake Garda had the option of phoning up their national radio station to ask the afternoon presenter to help them out of their predicament. But it seems that pretty much every Irish voyager faced with a cancelled or delayed flight thought it best to phone Joe, his place of work and the wife – often in that order.

Hearing the stories, it was obvious some people found the notion of being unable to return home deeply stressful, and to those people Uncle Joe offered the soothing clucks and miaows for which he has become famous. But it was equally obvious that many others found the whole thing nothing short of exhilarating. Some of the tales of extraordinary travel adventure were related with unstoppable gusto.

“Took an overnight sleeper from Berne to Vienna, Joe. Cadged a lift on an Easy Singles lorry from there to Bordeaux. Paid two grand for a car there, Joe, and we are hugging the French coast as I speak to you, Joe. As I speak! Should be in Cherbourg at 2am. Hope to be home at eight. Fifty-eight hours straight, Joe. And if I had to do it all again, I wouldn’t change a single thing.”

If they say this with an air of pride, they are surely entitled to it. The crisis at least restored a swift sense of adventure to many lives: faced with an unexpected problem, they found that that their sense of resourcefulness and their survival instinct were intact.

The old Icelandic smoker literally made Europe a level playing field once more. Owners of private jets were faced to make alternative arrangements along with raggedy-ass students back-packing their way around the art galleries of Europe.

And so Liverpool FC were among the many thousands of Europeans who resorted to trains, planes and automobiles so they could show up for a football match this week. Benitez admitted the journey had been slow and tiring and not altogether pleasant. But it had also encouraged the team to do things they would not normally bother doing, such as talking to one another and having a laugh.

The sheer strangeness of the journey had, the manager insisted, helped to bring the squad closer together and made them more determined not to waste the trip. It was a stirring argument, weakened only by the fact that, later in the evening, Liverpool went out and lost 1-0 to Madrid in what was generally considered to be a rather insipid and tired performance.

But what did people expect? The poor guys were suffering from jet lag.

Or something like that.