expectations had broken them down to such an extent, it had degenerated into something that was manic and hysterical and ultimately quite barking. In fact,
their poor manager Bobby Robson would be maddened in every sense of the word during Euro 88 and the Italia 90 campaign which was still ahead of him.
That would be the same Sir Bobby who eventually became the supremo of ... the Republic of Ireland. Which tells us that either he had forgiven us or we had forgiven him. Or that there
wasn’t much badness in it, in the first place.
We had had our fun and eventually, we really were ready to move on.
——
On the morning after Ireland’s victory in Stuttgart I arrived back in Heathrow having flown through the night from New York — the plane was delayed for hours in JFK , leaving me with no alternative but to begin the celebrations on the ground with a few more cold beers, then show what seemed to me like admirable restraint in the air
— while I smoked a few hundred cigarettes as usual I don’t recall being very, very drunk, but then there was such a strange combination of sensations going on: the lack of sleep, the
defeat of England, and the beer already on board, I was probably experiencing some disorder of the senses that I had never gone through before.
I do recall being merry enough to indulge in a bit of banter with a newspaper vendor at Heathrow about what Paddy had done to him the previous day. But he didn’t want to play.
It seemed to be of vital importance to read as many English papers as possible, to savour their shame and their savagery towards their own boys. So while I waited for the flight back to Dublin,
I devoured them all, broadsheet and tabloid. Christ, it was fine stuff. The prevailing theme was that England had not just lost disgracefully, they had lost to a team which was generally
characterised as a rag-bag of plodders and journeymen, thrown together by Big Jack in the course of some desperate trawl through the lower regions of the English leagues.
And Packie Bonner, who played in Scotland, was largely a stranger to them, too, just some geezer who would be going back to the obscurity from whence he came, but who had played like the devil
himself, the way that the crazed keeper Tomascevski had played for Poland on another night of sin, a long time ago.
Had they any idea how much we were enjoying this? Evidently not, but then they didn’t really care about us. They were just using our supposed awfulness as yet another weapon with which to
batter Bobby Robson and his pampered superstars such as Kenny Sansom, Gary Stevens and Neil Webb. They had Loadsamoney and we had none, but what good was it to them?
By now Christy Moore would be finishing off the writing of his new ballad, ‘Joxer Goes To Stuttgart’, and the story was still unfolding. We would face the Soviet Union on Wednesday
and Holland the following Saturday. But we did not want to step out of this England reverie yet. We would still have a couple of days to get ourselves up for the Soviets and what Jack called
‘Wor Dutch’, and we had no idea if the lads could get it up again for those challenges.
Let us not forget that there were only eight teams in this Euro 88, that there was a heightened sense of belonging to an elite, or at least belonging to a group which contained an elite. There
was nowhere to turn in that competition without encountering some deeply intimidating prospect, some potential trauma of epochal proportions.
But since the most terrifying one had passed, what was the worst that could happen to us now? That we would get turned over by the Russians or Wor Dutch? Well, there could be some suffering on
the way there, as it was now becoming clear to me, with the papers read, that England had been all over us to such an extent that most men who had lived through it would never be the same
again.
Soon I would be hearing of men drinking savagely all the way through that match, drinking whiskey straight
their poor manager Bobby Robson would be maddened in every sense of the word during Euro 88 and the Italia 90 campaign which was still ahead of him.
That would be the same Sir Bobby who eventually became the supremo of ... the Republic of Ireland. Which tells us that either he had forgiven us or we had forgiven him. Or that there
wasn’t much badness in it, in the first place.
We had had our fun and eventually, we really were ready to move on.
——
On the morning after Ireland’s victory in Stuttgart I arrived back in Heathrow having flown through the night from New York — the plane was delayed for hours in JFK , leaving me with no alternative but to begin the celebrations on the ground with a few more cold beers, then show what seemed to me like admirable restraint in the air
— while I smoked a few hundred cigarettes as usual I don’t recall being very, very drunk, but then there was such a strange combination of sensations going on: the lack of sleep, the
defeat of England, and the beer already on board, I was probably experiencing some disorder of the senses that I had never gone through before.
I do recall being merry enough to indulge in a bit of banter with a newspaper vendor at Heathrow about what Paddy had done to him the previous day. But he didn’t want to play.
It seemed to be of vital importance to read as many English papers as possible, to savour their shame and their savagery towards their own boys. So while I waited for the flight back to Dublin,
I devoured them all, broadsheet and tabloid. Christ, it was fine stuff. The prevailing theme was that England had not just lost disgracefully, they had lost to a team which was generally
characterised as a rag-bag of plodders and journeymen, thrown together by Big Jack in the course of some desperate trawl through the lower regions of the English leagues.
And Packie Bonner, who played in Scotland, was largely a stranger to them, too, just some geezer who would be going back to the obscurity from whence he came, but who had played like the devil
himself, the way that the crazed keeper Tomascevski had played for Poland on another night of sin, a long time ago.
Had they any idea how much we were enjoying this? Evidently not, but then they didn’t really care about us. They were just using our supposed awfulness as yet another weapon with which to
batter Bobby Robson and his pampered superstars such as Kenny Sansom, Gary Stevens and Neil Webb. They had Loadsamoney and we had none, but what good was it to them?
By now Christy Moore would be finishing off the writing of his new ballad, ‘Joxer Goes To Stuttgart’, and the story was still unfolding. We would face the Soviet Union on Wednesday
and Holland the following Saturday. But we did not want to step out of this England reverie yet. We would still have a couple of days to get ourselves up for the Soviets and what Jack called
‘Wor Dutch’, and we had no idea if the lads could get it up again for those challenges.
Let us not forget that there were only eight teams in this Euro 88, that there was a heightened sense of belonging to an elite, or at least belonging to a group which contained an elite. There
was nowhere to turn in that competition without encountering some deeply intimidating prospect, some potential trauma of epochal proportions.
But since the most terrifying one had passed, what was the worst that could happen to us now? That we would get turned over by the Russians or Wor Dutch? Well, there could be some suffering on
the way there, as it was now becoming clear to me, with the papers read, that England had been all over us to such an extent that most men who had lived through it would never be the same
again.
Soon I would be hearing of men drinking savagely all the way through that match, drinking whiskey straight
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