We used to travel hopefully. We’d travel to Germany to play a team with Jurgen Klinsmann in it or to Holland - the home of total football - and we’d honestly think: ‘might nick something here.’ And somehow, despite the weight of history, the form books and common sense, we’d return with 200 cigarettes, two litres of vodka and an away point.
Those heady days seemed long gone. The days when Holland had five of the best strikers money could buy lined up against us and we held out for a one nil seemed to gone forever. Most recently we haven’t even travelled hopefully to home games. We’ve looked at line-ups of teams that might not return home if they were granted asylum and prayed for a nil all draw. Not any more.
The result in Germany has changed everything. A man from Waterford, a full back, strode up the field like someone walking a dog and deftly flicked the ball off the outside of his boot and into the German net. And this the net belonging to a team who recently put seven past Brazil and were urged to go easy on them to avoid totally humiliating them. Oh happy days.
This is a good feeling and yes it may not last but nor too might good health or a full head of hair. The fact that it may not last is all the more reason to savour it, dine out on it and tweet about it to people who thought you emigrated in 2008.
"Those of you who join the dots between a fiscal improvement and football success and come up with ‘Italia '90 all over again,’ are likely to be disappointed."
Today is a day to look at the group table and see Ireland on seven points, with the most difficult away game behind us and a manager on the bench who instils calm into you with every camera shot taken. Admittedly, he is sitting beside the craziest man in football, but increasingly you wonder if he has him there so he at least knows where he is.
I don’t think we should read too much into this wonderful football result coinciding with the first non-draconian Budget in seven years. Those of you who join the dots between a fiscal improvement and football success and come up with ‘Italia 90 all over again,’ are likely to be disappointed.
Political editor Shane Coleman, of this parish, described it as the biggest giveaway budget ever by a government – allow me to paraphrase – ‘with no arse in its trousers.’
This worried me a bit. It was like seeing an alcoholic relative who’s been dry for seven years take a half of a beer to celebrate a birthday. ‘He shouldn’t really be doing that,’ we all think, but afterwards he seems fine and didn’t we all have a good night?
‘And there were times during those seven dry years I almost wanted to force a drink on him, the dry shite,’ says an elderly aunt.
We all laugh. But still I think, do you not remember what he was like when he had a few? Do you honestly not remember? It couldn’t happen again, could it?
