Football Focusses

For a while there on Sunday morning I thought I d spent the previous twelve hours in a particularly bad script from Dallas and that the events in Skopje s City Stadium were a mere blip on my frazzled mental radar screen. Should you have bought Sunday World and gone straight to the TV section (where our live-wire telly team puts you in the picture ) without glancing at anything else first it could well have happened to you too. There on the preview page the Top Programme was listed as Ireland vs Macedonia. Tonight, TV3, 6pm .
Leafing over in feverish anticipation, the grinning face of the luxuriantly moustachioed Mark Lawrenson occupied pride of place in the TV3 listings for the day. Gosh, maybe it had all been a bad dream and the Republic didn t really screw up automatic qualification by conceding a scandalously slack goal with barely ten seconds left on the clock. Thank you Sunday World, thanks a bleedin bunch!
In the earlier part of the day the omens didn t seem particularly bad for this crucial match. Unlike the day of our World Cup quarter-final in Rome nine years ago, when an old woman stuck her head through the door of the airport bus in Busaras and enquired if we were bound for Lough Derg, there didn t appear to be a malevolent planetary misalignment planned for later that evening. Surely we d be able to see our way past the Macedonians with a bit to spare, leaving our fate resting on the outcome of the Croatia vs Yugoslavia game in Zagreb. But before events unfolded unravelled, more like there was some fun to be had watching how England s group panned out.
Knowing that anything but a Swedish win over Poland in the Rasunda Stadium would consign Kevin Keegan s stuttering side to the netherworld of friendlies for the next year made for an atmosphere in Fallon s pub which could best be described as smirking superiority (apart, that is, from the lone Brit at the end of the bar whose nerve-endings were shredded long before the game kicked off on Sky Sports).
For over an hour this poor chap went through torment as the rest of the clientele gently wound him up with raucous cheers whenever a Polish defender hoofed another hopeful cross into the stratosphere. And if he was edgy, the Sky commentator was on the point of delirium until Kennet Andersson broke through in the 64th minute. After that you could smell the fear all the way from Stockholm to The Coombe.
A miss of Stapletonian proportions from Andersson, followed by a handful of probing Polish breakaways made for fine pub theatre with the Sky man howling at one point Come on Sweden, hold the ball! England expects it! And you thought George Hamilton was bad! A last-minute goal by Henrik Larsson sealed the Swedish victory and England had slithered through to the play-offs. Cut to a press conference with Kevin Keegan and there he is blathering on about how he thinks England can actually win the tournament, despite having only beaten Luxembourg twice and Poland at home in the qualifiers. When the wheels come off that particular wagon you ll hear the laughter reverberate around Europe. But enough of that, there are cans to be bought.
After about fifteen minutes of TV3 s coverage it dawned on me that nothing which was being said onscreen was actually registering. That s in no way a bad reflection on the job studio anchor Trevor Welch and his sidekicks Noel King and Mark Lawrenson were doing (although with all the latter s flitting between BBC and TV3 you can sometimes become confused as to who he means when he says We ), just that this was a straightforward call : beat these fuckers and see what happens in Zagreb. The last thing we needed was a repeat of the 1997 horrorshow in the same stadium, when we not only wore a retina-ruining orange strip (the FAI wisely decided against making those available for public consumption, although they d probably go down a treat at an Old Firm game) but threw away a two-goal lead to go down 3-2, the whole farce topped off by Jason McAteer s flying kick at an opponent. This time there should be no messing.
By kick-off I was in a state of considerable agitation. On paper, Mick McCarthy s side looked capable enough, despite the feeling that Robbie Keane has been playing with an injury for the past couple of games, his Coventry team-mate Gary Breen hasn t played first-team football since early September, Gary Kelly is hardly back to full match fitness and, despite magnificent displays in his last three internationals, Alan Kelly is still warming the bench at Blackburn Rovers. All this, plus I m having my picture taken.
Cathal Dawson may well be an ace photographer and top bloke but he knows bugger all about football. Less than twenty minutes into the game and he s crouching down with his back to the screen, snapping away some reaction shots when I leap off the couch and emit the kind of primitive noises last heard in Quest For Fire, or possibly that ultra-rare Napalm Death acappella album : UUGGHHHHNYAAAGH! Er, that was very good but you moved a bit too fast, could you do it again? UUGGHHHHNYAAAGH! YOU FUCKIN DAISY! I replied suavely. Oh, did something happen?
Sort of, Cathal. The 19th minute, Niall Quinn on his arse, ball bobbling around, a mad scramble.1-0! Looking back at the goal, I m still not convinced that it was actually Quinner who got the final touch, rather than some hapless Macedonian who kneed it into the back of his own net, but who the hell cares? All that remained now was for the Republic to notch another one before the break and we might actually be able to watch this match without the aid of industrial strength sedatives.
Then it seemed as if we might not actually be able to watch the bloody thing at all as the screen suddenly went a rather fetching shade of grey with a nice snowy pattern imposed over it. Huh? Panic! Grab the zapper and see if it s the entire kit n caboodle that s disappeared. No, all stations intact except TV3 and TnaG. Still, Jim Davidson s Generation Game is jolly entertaining these days. And if I was in a furniture-chewing lather sitting at home I can only imagine the sheer terror which descended on the nation s publicans during those horrible few minutes we were deprived of pictures from Skopje, as the prospect of a narky, tanked-up mob wreaking revenge on whichever item of furniture came to hand became a real possibility. Mind you, they must have nearly shit themselves laughing in the RTE Social Club.
After what seemed like an eternity but couldn t have been more than five minutes during which great news came in from Zagreb that Croatia had scored normal service was restored on the set and, alas, on the pitch as the Republic reverted to the kind of clueless drivel which made the away fixture in Malta such a trial.
By halftime it became apparent that Ireland were heading for another of their dog days and while they might score again there was always the possibility that Macedonia could sneak one, especially given the increasingly fragile form of Steve Staunton at left-full. It didn t help that Yugoslavia went in 2-1 up, their lead coming courtesy of a complete howler by the Croatian keeper Ladic. This was going to be a very long forty-five minutes.
No disrespect to TV3 commentator Conor Macnamara and his sidekick Frank Stapleton but anything they said in the second half just went in one ear and out the other as the realisation dawned that Mick McCarthy s tactical plan for the last half-hour was to hold what we had (at this point it was 2-2 in Zagreb so we were still on for an automatic spot in Euro 2000).
Now, there is nothing guaranteed to send shivers down the spine of a Republic fan than the prospect of the team sitting on a one-goal lead. The Germans and Italians are the best in Europe at this malarkey, mainly because they do it week-in and week-out in their domestic leagues whereas our boys over on the mainland are geared to hustle and bustle until the final whistle. What McCarthy fails to grasp when opting for this strategy is that it s never a good idea to sit back, surrender space and let the opposition queue up on the halfway line to come at you. We paid the price for that in Zagreb last month, but maybe he thought that his shiny new contract granted him previously hidden powers. And as for the substitutions!
It s at least fifteen years since the words Tony Cascarino and fresh legs could have been used in the same sentence with any degree of accuracy, but there he was with fifteen minutes to go, a below-par Robbie Keane having made way for Keith O Neill ten minutes previously. How Gary Kelly stayed on the pitch is a mystery but replacing our best outfield player (Mark Kennedy) with Ipswich s clunky Matt Holland five minutes from time was nothing short of insane. Kennedy had murdered the right-full all night and surely Kevin Kilbane would have made more sense as a straight swop. Nah, not for our Mick, who could actually be heard above the commentary team bellowing at the players like the worst lunatic you d come across up in the 15 Acres.
And then it happened. With no more than ten seconds left in stoppage time Alan Kelly made yet another fine save to give the Macedonians a corner. They couldn t. Surely they couldn t? Oh yes they fucking could. Corner, Macedonia s stuffed right-full Goran Stavrevski waddles forward and rises completely unchallenged to equalise. There were three Irish players within two yards of him when he jumped, all rooted to the spot and with no-one covering the far post (Hi Steve!) that was it. Zagreb all over again. YOU STUPID FUCKING BASTARDS!
I couldn t even watch the post-match analysis, seeing that my girlfriend had just come home as the goal went in and it was only after a full five minutes of foul-mouthed rage that I managed to say Hiya!
No, I went and sat on the toilet for a long while, staring at the wall and trying to imagine what kind of shite McCarthy would come out with as some sort of justification for this travesty. Good job I didn t catch it live or I d have spent most of Sunday traipsing around electrical stores pricing new tellies. England and Scotland are delighted to be in the play-offs and we seem to be disappointed to be there, was one of his gems, declaring himself happy with the performance but perhaps failing to realise that we should have been there automatically and if it wasn t for that horrendous blunder by Ladic in Zagreb we d be out of the thing entirely.
Later that night BBC2 s showing of The Life Of Brian lightened my dark, malevolent mood somewhat, and at least that did feature someone saying I m not the messiah! It ll be a long while before you hear anything similar at one of McCarthy s post-match press conferences. n