Poland here we come!

At last, the wrathful Gods have done us something of a favour. The fuckers certainly owed us one, after the catastrophic events of Paris, but the Euro 2012 draw really isn’t very intimidating at all. A group containing Russia, Slovakia, Macedonia, Armenia and Andorra might involve clocking up plenty of air miles and lack a certain je ne sais quoi in the glamour stakes, but on a purely footballing level, it shouldn’t pose a mountainous task for the Boys in Green. And of course, we’ve got a score to settle with the world in general, having been denied a place at the 2010 World Cup – which we would almost certainly have won had we got there, an incontrovertible fact, which no-one in their right mind would dispute. As well you know.

Events having cruelly intervened to deny us the opportunity of demonstrating our innate supremacy over every other nation on the planet in South Africa, we’ll have to make do with conquering Europe. While it doesn’t exactly make up for the outrageous injustice inflicted on us that fateful night (OK, I’ll stop, maybe, one day, when I’ve got over it, if I ever do), the draw at least ensures that we can approach the qualifiers entertaining realistic notions of getting to Poland or the Ukraine.
The truth is that if we perform with anything remotely resembling the level of virtuosity we displayed away to Italy and France in the World Cup campaign, we should cruise through this group with at least a 100% record, maybe even 110%. True, the sinister Russkies might be able to nick a point against us in Moscow if they get lucky and the temperature drops too far below the minus-20 mark, but the other nine fixtures are eminently winnable.
As we demonstrated in Bari and Paris, this team is genuinely capable of putting it up to anyone. Of course, it may be that we – please note the royal first person plural – are reading too much into those displays, conveniently overlooking the turgid football which characterised Trap’s troops in the rest of the World Cup qualifiers, the horribly laboured jousts against Cyprus and Georgia, that pig-ugly home tie against Montenegro.
This Ireland team does indeed have a few disturbing characteristics: most notably, the apparent compulsion to discard any shred of attacking ambition as soon as we take a 1-0 lead, and the terminal unwillingness to get our skates on until we go 1-0 down and are forced to chase a game, at which point we invariably start to look like world-beaters.
And there’s a pessimistic school of thought which contends that things are likely to get worse before they get better, that we’re potentially staring at a few years in the wilderness in the manner of our Celtic cousins Wales and Scotland and our friends in the North. This theory is based on the fact that the team currently consists of a handful of top-level operators (Dunne, O’Shea, Given, Duff and Keane, all of whom will be the wrong side of 30 by the time the Euro Finals come around) after whom the quality level drops alarmingly. A supporting cast of journeymen drawn from the likes of Hull, Preston and Stoke’s bench isn’t exactly a foundation for world domination.
In case you are not sufficiently depressed yet, I might point out that Macedonia and Slovakia have both proven to be treacherous assignments in the past. Armenia have been able to pull off the occasional home victory against more illustrious opponents, and the trip to the mid-Caucasus is potentially fraught with danger.
As for Andorra, their record of 24 defeats from their last 24 competitive games would not exactly strike fear into what remains of my heart, although I seem to remember them coming to Lansdowne Road a few years ago and leading 1-0 after about half an hour, before we ‘rallied’ to win 3-1 on one of those occasions which give the lie to Pele’s vision of ‘the beautiful game’.
So, the path may not be entirely straightforward. But I’d venture to suggest that first place is achievable and second place shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. The bookies surely do us a grave disservice by pricing us up as joint-second favourites with the Slovaks, with Russia overwhelming odds-on favourites.
Meanwhile, England’s idyllic World Cup preparations have been thrown into something of a tailspin by the mire of the John Terry affair, which rather overshadowed the equally intriguing murk of the Avram Grant affair.
The morose Israeli with the electrifying personality, the man who makes Declan Kidney sound like Jose Mourinho and Brian Cowen look like Brad Pitt, won an office bet for Foul Play when he was confirmed as the Premier League manager spotted by The Sun visiting a Thai massage parlour widely suspected by Portsmouth locals of being a brothel. The reaction of his wife Tzofit was priceless: “He’s the manager of Portsmouth. Do you know how tough that is? He’s a great manager stuck in a shitty team. He works so hard, he needs two massages a day, and from two women, not one. If Avram wanted to go to a brothel, it is his right. He can do whatever he likes.”
Tzofit’s excellent analysis of her husband’s team was fully borne out as they crashed to a 5-0 defeat to Man United, plumbing previously-uncharted depths of incompetence, while their glorious leader stood miserably on the sidelines with his shoulders hunched, cutting a less than inspirational figure, and undoubtedly wishing he was somewhere else. The club appears to be going down in flames: they still owe colossal sums of money for players signed during the Harry Redknapp era, almost all of whom have since moved on. Their very existence is now under threat, as is also the case with Crystal Palace, whose demise would be mourned by Foul Play on the basis that they were apparently the first club I supported at the age of five (something to do with liking their name, which is fair enough).
Indeed, there are suspicions that dozens of clubs may be about to face the Reaper, as the global financial apocalypse continues to wreak collateral havoc. I wouldn’t like to see any of them going out of business, but in common with most fans, I’d certainly welcome a footballing landscape where money no longer has the potential to hideously distort the competitive balance the way it has done over the last 20-odd years. I have a feeling that football will ultimately be in a far healthier shape when the dust settles, with greater equality of opportunity and fluid movement between the divisions.
I recently read the excellent Brian Clough biography Provided You Don’t Kiss Me and was struck once again by the sheer implausibility of what he achieved with Nottingham Forest: winning promotion from the Second Division, then winning the League in their first season in the top-flight, then winning the European Cup two seasons running. It sounds utterly preposterous now. It certainly couldn’t have been done in the Nineties or Noughties.
Today’s kids (unless they’re fans of Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool or Man U) have grown up thinking that fifth place in the League is the highest achievement to which their team can aspire. As a fan of Hibernian (for those of you who’ve never heard of us, we inhabit the Scottish Premier League: look us up) I’ve spent the guts of three decades knowing full well that a third-place finish and a decent Cup run is as good as it’s ever going to get. When things got really grim, sometimes you were thrilled just to escape relegation.
But suddenly, with Rangers and Celtic pleading poverty and no longer able to flash the cash, and a vibrant, youthful, lovingly-assembled Easter Road crew still matching Celtic stride for stride well into February, it doesn’t seem entirely insane to dream of scaling the highest peaks. And as Elvis put it: “As long as a man has the strength to dream/ He can redeem his soul and fly”...
Right now, we stand three wins away from lifting the Cup for the first time since 1902. To fulfil an achievement that’s eluded you for 108 years... well, if that isn’t cause for riotous celebration and deep spiritual ecstasy, I don’t know what is. Watch this space.