from the bottle, beseeching the gods to stop the pain. If Gary Lineker and John Barnes
could do that to us, what could Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten do?
So rarefied was this competition, that even after winning the first match, we might still not even qualify from the group. After all our hard work breaking the hearts of the English, would it
make no difference in the end on the old scoreboard? After all that, would we be flying home from Germany on the same day as those poor unfortunate men?
Right now we could live with that. We had not entirely lost sight of the facts of football life, so we knew that we just weren’t as good as Wor Dutch, that we mightn’t be quite on
the same page as the Russians, who had actually beaten Wor Dutch 1-0, and after what England had done to us, and what we had gotten away with, we wondered in quiet moments if we were any good at
all — for Paddy, even as he received the love and the admiration of a grateful world, the old demons would still be gnawing away at him.
One recalled a moment of spontaneous hilarity at Lansdowne during the match against Bulgaria in the qualifiers, when Mick McCarthy had embarked on something of an unlikely solo run and a shout
had gone up from the stand, ‘Show them your class, Mick!’
And it wasn’t just the crowd that laughed. Mick himself no doubt saw the funny side of it, the truth in it.
Ah, yes, at some deep level, we knew our place.
And then as the Republic duly went up against the Soviet Union (or ‘the might of the Soviet Union’ to give them their full title) the strangest thing of all happened.
We got good.
That night in Hanover will always be encapsulated in the image of McCarthy’s long throw-in to Ronnie Whelan and Ronnie’s volley to the top corner of the net, and his fist-pumping
celebration.
For Jack it would have been almost the perfect goal, virtually no fannying around at any point of the proceedings, though if Mick had managed to throw it straight into the net, with maybe a tiny
deflection to make it legal, all the better.
Yet the effort from Ronnie was glorious, reminding us that no-one ever laughed when Ronnie went on a solo run, no-one ever shouted ‘Show them your class!’ Ronnie was all class, a
first-rate player with the best club side in the world, one of those awkward little facts which upset the preferred tabloid narrative of the rag-bag of plodders and journeymen.
Liam Brady would have added to the confusion except he had been injured in the run-up to Euro 88 and would probably not have made it anyway due to a suspension for a red card against
Bulgaria.
Jack would later say that he was delighted with Liam in that match, that ‘the penny had finally dropped with Liam’, that Liam had now put aside all that shit he used to do for
Juventus, and was playing as Jack wanted him to play, taking the ball from the front players, rather than taking it from the defence and building it from there. And generally fannying around. But
even though Liam had seen the light, it was generally felt that Jack wasn’t entirely gutted when Liam couldn’t make it, after all he had contributed to the cause, and the things that he
had seen.
And this performance against the Soviet Union would crystallise a conflict which would grow deeper as time went by.
We were now starting to accept that we had always had these players of the highest class, but that Jack had forged them into a unit that could compete and win and not be afraid of anyone. But in
doing that, perhaps he would deny them the freedom to move to a higher level, maybe even to play like Wor Dutch, who had never made any distinction between the desire to play good football and the
desire to win, who believed, in fact, that you couldn’t have one without the other and who had been vindicated in this belief, many times.
The Republic played good football against the Soviet Union that night. But we didn’t win. Yes, we were good, but they still equalised with
could do that to us, what could Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten do?
So rarefied was this competition, that even after winning the first match, we might still not even qualify from the group. After all our hard work breaking the hearts of the English, would it
make no difference in the end on the old scoreboard? After all that, would we be flying home from Germany on the same day as those poor unfortunate men?
Right now we could live with that. We had not entirely lost sight of the facts of football life, so we knew that we just weren’t as good as Wor Dutch, that we mightn’t be quite on
the same page as the Russians, who had actually beaten Wor Dutch 1-0, and after what England had done to us, and what we had gotten away with, we wondered in quiet moments if we were any good at
all — for Paddy, even as he received the love and the admiration of a grateful world, the old demons would still be gnawing away at him.
One recalled a moment of spontaneous hilarity at Lansdowne during the match against Bulgaria in the qualifiers, when Mick McCarthy had embarked on something of an unlikely solo run and a shout
had gone up from the stand, ‘Show them your class, Mick!’
And it wasn’t just the crowd that laughed. Mick himself no doubt saw the funny side of it, the truth in it.
Ah, yes, at some deep level, we knew our place.
And then as the Republic duly went up against the Soviet Union (or ‘the might of the Soviet Union’ to give them their full title) the strangest thing of all happened.
We got good.
That night in Hanover will always be encapsulated in the image of McCarthy’s long throw-in to Ronnie Whelan and Ronnie’s volley to the top corner of the net, and his fist-pumping
celebration.
For Jack it would have been almost the perfect goal, virtually no fannying around at any point of the proceedings, though if Mick had managed to throw it straight into the net, with maybe a tiny
deflection to make it legal, all the better.
Yet the effort from Ronnie was glorious, reminding us that no-one ever laughed when Ronnie went on a solo run, no-one ever shouted ‘Show them your class!’ Ronnie was all class, a
first-rate player with the best club side in the world, one of those awkward little facts which upset the preferred tabloid narrative of the rag-bag of plodders and journeymen.
Liam Brady would have added to the confusion except he had been injured in the run-up to Euro 88 and would probably not have made it anyway due to a suspension for a red card against
Bulgaria.
Jack would later say that he was delighted with Liam in that match, that ‘the penny had finally dropped with Liam’, that Liam had now put aside all that shit he used to do for
Juventus, and was playing as Jack wanted him to play, taking the ball from the front players, rather than taking it from the defence and building it from there. And generally fannying around. But
even though Liam had seen the light, it was generally felt that Jack wasn’t entirely gutted when Liam couldn’t make it, after all he had contributed to the cause, and the things that he
had seen.
And this performance against the Soviet Union would crystallise a conflict which would grow deeper as time went by.
We were now starting to accept that we had always had these players of the highest class, but that Jack had forged them into a unit that could compete and win and not be afraid of anyone. But in
doing that, perhaps he would deny them the freedom to move to a higher level, maybe even to play like Wor Dutch, who had never made any distinction between the desire to play good football and the
desire to win, who believed, in fact, that you couldn’t have one without the other and who had been vindicated in this belief, many times.
The Republic played good football against the Soviet Union that night. But we didn’t win. Yes, we were good, but they still equalised with
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