Steinbachek died last year. Only announced today. Even in 2017 were feeling the cold dead touch of 2016
Football in general has been shit since sky sports got involved.The world cup/euro’s have way too many teams now, fa cup and league cup hardly matter anymore, the European Cup/Uefa Cup was way better when it was a KO competition, games on nearly every night of the week now.Too much.
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Proper job there with the international’s on a Wednesday @8 pm and club games on a Saturday @3 with one game on UTV on Sunday afternoon @3 pm boom.
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A 48 team World Cup is really going to water down the qualifiers.
I also hate this “week of football” concept that splits the qualifiers onto different nights.
There was something wonderful about important qualifying matches taking place all over Europe simultaneously on Wednesday nights.
That final qualifying night in November '93 was utterly epic. It felt like it really mattered in a way it just doesn’t now and I nearly break out in a cold sweat just thinking about it.
I didn’t even know the results from the other groups until Sportsnight came on - the France-Bulgaria game was astonishing and is probably the greatest and most dramatic World Cup qualifier ever.
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Or 1:30pm at a floodlight-less Lansdowne Road.
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Sportsnight was class.Half ten Wednesday night.
Used to be great back in the day. We didn’t have floodlights in Lansdowne Road so we played our home qualifiers in the middle of the working day.
Think the home games therefore actually kicked off early in the afternoon, at something like 2pm or 2.30pm.
We’d be allowed to watch some of the big qualification matches on tv in primary school. It was a big deal getting the tv brought in. We’d look forward to it for weeks before.
Remember being in the class room, load of us little cunts huddled around one tv as we were thumping the North 3-0 (the '94 World Cup campaign?). Also vividly recall us drawing with England 1-1 (was it Cascarino or Quinn who bagged an equaliser?) in what may have been a Euro '92 qualifier?
Young kids today have no appreciation of what it was like only twenty years ago or beyond to get match updates. No streams or SSN or Live Score/Flash Score. Desperately trying to get a decent reception for Radio Five Live to get latest scores on English cross channel matches.
Great times.
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Quinn.
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Yeah I remember having a telly rolled into the classroom on a Wednesday afternoon for the home quailifers in the early 90’s alright.
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Cascarino equalised at Lansdowne Road which I believe was the game being referred to. Peach of a header it was too. Cascarino was always a purer header of a ball than Quinn but Quinn was better on the ground.
Quinn equalised at Wembley.
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Sorry, you’re right, it was Cascarino, Quinn scored the equaliser in Wembley.
Them were the days alright. Remember watching qualifiers in some pub who’s name escapes me in Waterford, all the locals started singing “back to school, back to school, back to school” to us students, hilarious. Not so hilarious was the near riot when we started singing “on the dole, on the dole, on the dole” back at them.
I remember us beating the shite out of Turkey, with David O’Leary of all people scoring.
That never happened
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Sweet times. I was in the stadium for that and was in the upper tier of the new stand at the perfect angle behind Cas. Ole o fucking le.
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Graham Taylor dropped Paul Gascoigne for that game and played Gordon Cowans instead.
That was the start of his troubles with the media, I think. He got slated for it.
It was a rather strange decision, to be fair.
I remember the mother coming home from bingo that night telling me that when Quinn scored the priest who was listening on the radio in the kitchen of the community center ran out on the stage to interrupt the bingo to let everyone know the score,a huge cheer went up then it was eyes down again,Ireland played those limey cunts off the park that night too iirc.
Wasn’t Cowan’s a villian?
No, it did, it was definitely Cascarino.