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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Sport
Vincent Whelan

Paddy Andrews recalls prank that led to him standing at Jim Gavin's door with a bag of cans

Paddy Andrews has shared the hilarious story of how a prank resulted in him turning up at Jim Gavin's door when he thought he was heading to a secret party held by the Dublin players.

'The Wolf' shared the caper in his guise as co-host of The Football Pod with former Footballer of the Year James O'Donoghue and Tommy Rooney.

He set the scene by outlining how the players were keen to make the most of a bank holiday weekend and a three-week gap before their next match against Kerry.

However, Gavin had pulled him to the side before they broke up for the long weekend and instructed him that he wasn't to join in any social activity because he had missed games due to a groin injury and needed to rest in order to make sure he was right for The Kingdom.

At the time Andrews agreed wholeheartedly but eventually temptation won out and he joined his teammates at a series of sessions.

On the Sunday afternoon they were still going strong but were split up all over the city.

He got word that Michael Darragh MacAuley was hosting a house party that evening so he asked for the address so he could pop by.

Unbeknownst to him, he was set up to fail from there.

We'll let him take up the story from then on:

"The northsiders were over in Swords and the southsiders were out in The Orchard in Rathfarnham. MacAuley was kind of organising that.

"So he's onto me and I say 'yeah I'll shoot over on the M50 and be there around five or six o'clock'. Because everyone's going back to his gaff for a party supposedly.

"I got a crate of cans and hopped in the taxi, asked for the address...never even crossed my mind when he sent me this address.

"So I pull up outside in the taxi and...it looks pretty quiet. The taxi driver says 'yeah this is the address' and I say 'ok, I don't see any cars or anything' but march up anyway and bang on the door.

"This woman opens the door. I say 'I'm here for MacAuley's party.'

"She looks at me and goes 'no no, there's no party here."

At least it wasn't Jim who opened the door (©INPHO/Tommy Dickson)

At this juncture a puzzled Andrews goes back up the driveway and rings MacAuley again. He's assured that that was just his sister messing and encourages Andrews to ignore her and go in the back as they're all out there.

He bangs on the door again with a crate of cans in hand but then there's a moment of realisation when Gavin's wife Jennifer recognises him and goes 'Paddy? Paddy Andrews?'

To which he replies 'yeah.'

"This is Jim's house!"

Andrews added: "I just stopped. Literally that was the first moment it dawned on me, mid-stride into the hallway."

To top it all off, Jennifer then said: "He's upstairs. Will I get him?"

Andrews noted: "I've never sobered up as quickly. I knew I was over my injury because I turned and ran out the driveway!

"Rang MacAuley and he had me on loudspeaker...the boys were howling."

Sure enough when he did eventually arrive at the right address he received a standing ovation from his teammates.

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