Football's Night Of Shame

You need a steady supply of substances to get you through an Ireland match these days. Foul Play, displaying the same yen for rotational tactics as Mick McCarthy, opted for beer on the night of the Yugoslavia game, dope during the Croatia match, and beer again for Malta.
But not even several strong lagers could massage the nerves during the Maltese mayhem. By the end, you were petrified to look at the screen, for fear of witnessing something even more ghastly than what had gone before, and not being able to come to terms with it.
It was, without doubt, quite the worst Irish performance of the 1990s. It gets the nod over the Liechtenstein horror show of 1995, for the simple reason that Ireland spent the entirety of that game on the attack.
In Valletta, it was us playing the roles of the besieged Liechtensteiners, strapped tight to the mast as waves and waves of Maltesers rolled over us.
Malta s chief weapon of choice was one Chucks Nwoko, an African gentleman whose physique suggested that he divides his time between amateur wrestling practice and sipping sasparillas outside Tony s Bar in downtown Valletta.
Faced with such crudity, the sole response of Ireland s defenders was to let themselves be knocked aside like bowling skittles all afternoon, with the result that McCarthy very nearly presided over the grisliest result in the country s history.
The most erudite comment on the day s proceedings came as TV3 s Conor McNamara breathlessly told us: It s some solace for Mick that, just like against Yugoslavia, his side have fought back bravely after conceding an equaliser . . .
Immediately there was an anguished howl to my left: We re playing fucking Malta, for fuck s sake!
At least when England eased off the gas against Luxembourg, they waited until they had established a five-goal lead before they did it.

Speaking of the neutrals favourites, they were hard at it again last week, flailing away to no apparent purpose in front of 15,000 hooting Poles in sunny Warsaw. The more things change . . .
At this stage, the whole horrible Poland-England saga has had so many chapters it should be remaindered in the Waterstones bargain bin. Whenever tournament draws take place, both teams are drawn irresistibly together like iron filings to a magnet. There appears to be nothing UEFA (or FIFA) can do about this state of affairs, but most of us wouldn t mind if the series occasionally produced some half-decent football.
Last Wednesday, while Ireland were stumbling into the winner s enclosure in Malta, what has now become effectively an annual derby took place in the appropriately grim Legia Stadion. With its cheap corrugated fencing and cramped-looking stands, the ambience was more Cardiff v Swansea than Milan v Inter.
Unperturbed, the local yahoos did their best to put this right by letting off more red flares than you could shake a stick at, though this didn t deter the local plod from reaching for their batons quickly, and often.
Much was made afterwards of David Batty s unrepentant attitude about his sending-off. Indeed, the Leeds man was positively bullish about his role in England s failure.
Having left the galloping Michalski writhing on the grass in agony after a challenge that even Stuart Pearce would have blanched at (well, okay, maybe not), his response was to accuse the greasy Pole of hamming it up for the referee, when all available televisual evidence suggested the polar opposite, and then some.
That old Bulldog spirit will serve England well yet.
Should Poland apply the same measure of determination and bloodymindedness to their assignment in Sweden as they evinced on Wednesday, Keegan s charges can forget about Euro 2000.
The home team fought like absolute bastards throughout, showing uncommon spine and resolve. If they repeat the dose, I wouldn t give Brazil much hope of getting in behind them, never mind Sweden.
They had few ambitions beyond the securing of a solitary point, and were prepared to endure every conceivable ordeal short of limb-loss to achieve it.
Even on the rare occasions when the Polish forwards contrived to create chances, it looked as though they had found themselves in the England final third by accident. That said, they looked no worse either individually or collectively than the hapless Steve McManaman, of whom Poland s Tomasz Hajto observed: I couldn t believe how bad he was. He did nothing.
There s no doubt that the Poles are even more sick of the sight of England than the English are of them, but after six English wins and four draws in the last ten meetings (yep, I counted), a draw may well have been considered as good as a victory. In short, this particular Slavic worm may finally have turned. n