The 1988 European Championship finals provided Irish
football fans, both at home and abroad, with a tangible sense of the validity
of both the sport itself and the presence of the national team on a continental
stage. Received wisdom had said that, prior to the backdoor qualification for
Germany (an 83rd minute Scotland winner away to Bulgaria effectively booked the
tickets), football in Ireland predominantly meant Gaelic football in the eyes
of ordinary citizens from Malin Head to Wexford and that soccer (as only the
Irish working classes and English elite call it) was the game of choice only in
Dublin and surrounding areas. Undoubtedly there was some truth in this; across
Ireland, bizarre social and geographical sporting factors persist, comparable
to Fife’s role as the cradle of Scottish cricket, whereby rough and raucous
Limerick is the spiritual home of Irish rugby and currently only 13 of
Ireland’s 32 counties are represented by teams in the League of Ireland.
Interestingly, in 1988/1989, 13 of Ireland’s 32 counties were represented by
teams in the League of Ireland. However, the level of support in Ireland for
the national side increased vastly in the aftermath of the 1988 finals and in
England, those of us who had never been able, in all honestly, to even view
ourselves as English never mind support their team, were finally provided with
a focus for our sporting ethnic identification.
Put simply, Ray Houghton’s 7th minute winner over England in
Stuttgart was the highpoint of our Irish supporting lives for hundreds of
thousands of second and third generation Anglo Irish football fans. Such a
shame that the 3.30pm kick off time on a Sunday afternoon meant almost all of
us watched it at home.
Something deeply significant happened that would profoundly
affect the Tyneside Irish diaspora I am proud to be a member of, between Wim
Kieft’s heartbreaking late winner for the Dutch on 18th June 1988 in
Gelsenkirchen that denied Jack Charlton’s team a place in the semi-finals and
the 0-0 draw with the north at Windsor Park that marked the start of Ireland’s
qualifying campaign for Italia 90 just shy of three months later. On Monday 22nd
August English licensing laws, that had restricted the sale of alcohol in the
afternoon ever since the introduction of the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act,
were liberalised to the extent that pubs were now able to remain open all day,
except on a Sunday where closure between 3.00 to 7.00 was still a legal
requirement. Effectively, though the
legislators weren’t to know it at the time, this would mean that the 1990 World
Cup was the first tournament any of us had watched in the pub. Frankly, it was
probably also the first World Cup finals that grabbed the entire collective
imagination.
The infrequent and irregular broadcasting of live matches in
those days, not to mention the lack of readily accessible information in the
pre internet era, meant the centrality of international games to the football
fan’s experience was not as pronounced as it supposedly is today. While I recall the rescheduling of an
important meeting at work in September 1989 to allow football fans to get home
for a tea-time kick off between Sweden and England, in the game Terry Butcher
split his head open (“people have won a VC for less,” according to Bobby
Robson), international breaks were given less prominence than the week long
cancellation of all other games, like a period of prolonged and solemn mourning
for proper football, we are forced to endure now. Partly it was due to the lack
of media exposure, partly due to the absence of widespread sporting hyperbole
in the pre Sky era and partly because of a lack of coherence in fixture
scheduling. For instance, Ireland’s home games would kick off in the afternoon,
even midweek, as Lansdowne Road didn’t have floodlights until 1993. The result
of these factors was that teams completed their qualifying campaigns almost
unnoticed, as it was only the tournaments themselves that really grabbed media
attention. For us in the diaspora, it
was only after Ireland’s 3-0 trouncing of the north on 11th October
1989 that the true significance became clear; avoid defeat in Malta and
qualification would be assured. The 2-0 victory courtesy of a double by John
Aldridge meant Ireland were on our way to Italy. On Tyneside, Jack Charlton’s
dismal spell in charge of Newcastle United had been conveniently forgiven and
forgotten for those of us with green blood feeding our black and white hearts.
The labyrinthine draw for the final groups for Italia 90
took place on Saturday 9th December 1989. Sulking over post match
pints of porter in The Wheatsheaf in
Felling following a 3-2 home loss to Oxford United, the atmosphere was lifted
by Grandstand passing on the news
that Ireland had been grouped with Holland, Egypt and, best of all, England.
Spontaneous shouting and roaring broke out, supplanted by a prolonged chant of There’s only one Ray Houghton rending
the air. However, unlike today there was
no sense of gathering hysteria at the imminent tournament. For a start, there
was half a domestic season to endure, not to mention 5 unbeaten friendlies
before the whole thing kicked off.
Received wisdom tells a narrative that suggests the 1990
World Cup finals were watched with deep regional pride in the north east as
Beardsley, Gascoigne and Waddle, as well as Bobby Robson represented the
Geordie Nation; that isn’t how I recall it at all. Personally, I was deeply
upset that Newcastle’s uncompromising full back John Anderson didn’t get the
nod to join Jack’s boys in Italy, but I’d got over it by the time the whole
thing kicked off with Cameroons hoofing Argentina all over the shop Friday 8th
June.
Twenty five years is a long time; exactly half my life to be
precise. However, my memories of the tournament as a whole, if not the actual
games themselves, remain clear. English
patriotism, rather than a more insidious form of nationalism that appeared to
develop at later tournaments, was widespread, infectious and often remarkably
innocent. Despite the occasional news
footage of radgies in Union Jack shorts and oxblood Doc Marten’s repeatedly
firing volleys of plastic patio furniture at advancing riot cops, the reality
of the World Cup for those in England itself was a lot more relaxed, with fun
being the keynote. As a Joy Division fan, I regard New Order as being very much
an inferior act, but they managed to surf the zeitgeist with World in Motion. I’d imagine you’ve not
even heard the Ireland World Cup song Put
‘Em Under Pressure, combining a sample from 70s Donegal prog rockers
Horslips with a sample of Jack Charlton’s rhetoric; you’re not missing much.
However, the team took the message on board and the opening 1-1 draw with
England, courtesy of Ronnie Whelan’s long range finish, was richly deserved.
The best accounts of watching the games actually in Ireland are by Roddy Doyle;
a factual essay can be found in the When
Saturday Comes book My Favourite
Year, but far more memorable is the description of events in a Barrytown
bar in his novel The Van. I couldn’t
hope to match his prose in attempting to convey the passion, excitement and
pride involved in supporting Ireland that night. Suffice to say, a packed Wheatsheaf almost exploded with delight
as the equaliser went in, followed by clenched fists, serious drinking and
atonal singing of traditional songs well past closing time by about 50 of us,
an eclectic collection that embraced 60 year old Irish fellas who could have
been members of The Dubliners and 19 year old students in Celtic shirts. For
the avoidance of doubt; this wasn’t anti English, it was pro-Irish. Unlike
certain enclaves of North London or the West of Scotland, to celebrate Irish
cultural identity wasn’t to try and focus on events in Belfast. We kept
politics out of sport, even when singing about Sir Roger Casement, the last
Englishman to do as much for Ireland as Jack Charlton did.
In contrast, the following Sunday’s 0-0 draw with Egypt
slipped by almost unnoticed. While England and Holland had played out a similar
stalemate the night before, cheered on by thronged pubs the length of the land,
the Sunday afternoon alcoholiday denied Ireland fans this opportunity. You
watched it in the house, or not at all. Shamefully, I’ll admit to watching it
on video as I used to play 5 a side on Sunday afternoons at Eldon Square
leisure centre and this took precedence. However, at least I got to see that game;
even if it was so terrible I fast forwarded my way through most of it. The
following Thursday saw the deciding group games, with the BBC opting to show
England versus Egypt. These days that would not provide a particular problem,
as Setanta show Irish sporting fixtures on subscription across the world. They
didn’t exist in 1990. Back then there was no internet streaming, no satellite
TV coverage, no digital radio, no email or text updates and, in many cases, not
even any Ceefax enabled tellies to keep abreast with the scores.
Gathering in The
Wheatsheaf, the only option was to crowd round an elderly solid state
transistor, tuned in to the shaky reception provided by RTE radio. The signal was terrible and after half an hour of murmured
conversations being shushed and murderous glances shot at those who drank
loudly or drew noisy on their smokes, during which time Ruud Gullit’s quality
finish had put the Dutch ahead, we abandoned the project and nervously watched
England crawl to a 1-0 win, while waiting for updates from Palermo. During the
second half there were none and, glumly, we assumed the worst. A crowd of us
stood chain smoking like expectant fathers in maternity waiting rooms when Des
Lynham, who used to be Irish a long time ago, cut to footage of Niall Quinn’s
brutal equaliser. It was the
quintessential Irish goal; Packie Bonner leathered it up the pitch, van Aerle’s
back pass had too much behind it, van Breukelen fumbled the ball and Quinn slid
the loose ball home. As the realisation hit we’d made the last 16, pandemonium
broke out. Glasses and drinks went everywhere as fellas scrambled onto tables
and the counter, punching the air. Even better, it turned out that as both
teams had identical records; lots had been drawn to find out the next round’s
opponents. High tech or what? No matter, the good news was we’d be playing
Romania not Germany.
The following Monday was perhaps the most tense I’ve ever
been watching a game on television in my life. Despite half the bar’s clientele
taking a day’s holiday in preparation and drinking themselves into a fervour
for the 5pm kick off, the stakes were now so high that you couldn’t enjoy it.
90 scoreless minutes were followed by an equally barren period of extra time;
penalties. It wasn’t football, it was chess. Jack Charlton couldn’t watch; he
scrounged a smoke off a spectator and looked away. In The Wheatsheaf some went outside, others prayed; only half a dozen
of us could watch it all. Eight regulation spot kicks were converted and then;
Timofte. The sight of Packie Bonner, huge, diving the right way, emerging hands
aloft was a perfect image for the tournament. The fact that David O’Leary
scored the decisive kick was almost incidental. There was no triumphalism this
time among our crowd; there were tears. The tension broke, the adrenaline
crashed and the stunning reality of a World Cup quarter final place for Ireland
dawned on us. Almost silently, spent, the bar emptied long before Italy booked
their place with a 2-0 win over Uruguay.
Ireland’s 1994 World cup campaign was Jack’s last hurrah and
the 1-0 win over Italy in New York, courtesy of Ray Houghton, was the moment of
the tournament for me. Sadly in 1990, Ireland were too respectful and lost 1-00 when Schillaci, a man entirely
of the moment, pounced after Bonner’s parry and drove the ball home for a
winner. In the bar, we took defeat with
grace and dignity; sure we’d not expected to get this far and frankly, wallets
were empty and livers enlarged by 3 weeks of serious drinking.
In looking back at the tournament, I see a very different
Ireland and a very different world.
Never again would Ireland be patronised and mocked as an international
football team. While the moans and snide digs about the Granny rule and
mercenary players persisted in some quarters, the real influence was that young
Irish kids were enabled to play whichever version of football they wanted; GAA
or Garrison Game. Through a quarter of a century of boom and bust, of Celtic
Tiger and Merkel’s bail-out, Irish football has undergone similar highs and
lows. What began in Stuttgart in 1988, became real in Italy in 1990 and
continues to this day, is the importance of the Ireland national team at home
and abroad; for that reason Italia 90 will live in my memory forever.
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