I thought it was a UEFA rule that booze couldn’t be brought to seats.
I wouldnt drink at a sporting event as a point of principle and the two hours sobering up stood me in good stead for the rest of the night.
I don’t know.
There were lads spilling drink all over the place but they seemed too pissed to notice.
It was tremendous fun
There were lads swigging out of bottles of wine in my row. Stewards took a nicely lax attitude. Sure you couldn’t be getting into people’s faces because of the auld Covid. But it was all good natured shenanigans. Kids seemed awestruck and spellbound by the japes. I didn’t see anyone crying or frightened. It was a tremendous carnival really. But that might not have come across on the television.
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The IRFU should put a non booing clause into the lease
I said it last night during the game, but I’ve been very very impressed with Josh Cullen, just the sort of player we’ve been crying out for. A gem. Seems a proper sort also. Vincent Kompany knows a player when he sees one.
I said this from Kenny’s first match. At least we tried to pass the fucking ball.
You’d be fuming if you heard the chant that was reverberating last night “The Irish boys are on a bender, Cristiano is a se* offender”.
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Stephen Kenny is right. We have to change or die.
Watching the Irish international team has been a grind for many years now. We did because we felt we were obligated to. But in truth, the last 19 years has felt like watching a 19 year long 0-0 draw in Georgia. Pock marked by occasional aberrations, like the play-off in Paris, when the team disregarded the manager’s tactics, the 1-0 win over Italy when the opposition were like a lovely bed and breakfast mammy in their hospitality, the 0-1 win in Austria when the team presumably disregarded the manager’s tactics, and eh, that’s about it.
This has started to feel like fun. I actually want to watch Ireland play and am emotionally invested, not emotionally invested enough to wade through a quagmire of Covid and actually go to a match yet, but hey, I’m sure that will come.
Mick McCarthy’s 1996-97 campaign springs to mind when describing where we are right now, although in an actual factual sense we are way off where we were then.
But it still sort of feels like that. We have a manager who is committed and wants this job like his life depends on it. He wants to change things and build something we can be, to quote Bart Simpson, maybe not proud of, but feel less shame about. It has been shambolic at times, like Mick’s first campaign was, but it feels like there are some sort of green shoots emerging, and we have to trust blindly. It feels sort of wholesome.
In October 2025 we will beat Holland at Lansdowne Road and qualify for a World Cup play off.
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Spot on. Sums up my view pretty much exactly.
Some great lines there too.
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What big club would be interested in Kenny anyway? There’s not exactly a line of Champions League clubs waiting for this guy. No PL team would take him, no Championship team would hire him, no Scottish PL club would hire him and probably no League One team. He’s burned his bridges at Shamrock Rovers, Dundalk, Longford Town, Derry City and Bohemians and Shelbourne would take Duffer over him. Maybe Cork City might hire him, that’s his only option outside of the national team.
And to think we are doing this at the moment with the, in theory, worst bunch of players in my memory adds to complete carefree and enjoyable nature of it.
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If Stephen Kenny gets @Cheasty to leave the house and go to a sports stadium that would be a greater achievement than qualifying for the world cup.
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It feels like a campaign of 1-1 draws at home to the Czech Republic in October 2006, which I forgot to reference in my previous post.
That was the most carefree and enjoyable Ireland match I have attended in the last 20 years. It was the last time I was in the old Lansdowne Road. When that flare went off after Kilbane scored I felt alive. Mentally I picture that flare on the terrace behind the goal going off at the exact time the ball hits the net, though that did not happen.
We didn’t know what we had until it was gone.
Still, change or die.
We must channel Rocky in Rocky IV.
Incredible rewriting of history here.
The Martin O’Neill years provided some of the best nights in Irish football history.
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Looking back we underachieved during that period between 2002 and 2008 in particular. We had a good side at that time but the Swiss in particular had our number to an infuriating extent. Hakin Yakin a case in point. I get your points about the upbeat nature recently and the greenshoots of recovery but Christ it would be nice to be in contention to qualify for a major tournament again or know that you’re within 90 minutes of qualifying.
The best Ireland games were the friendlies in the run up to World Cup 2002. Roy Keane hadn’t left yet, the team was great, the football was great, we dominated possession, the crowds were ravenous. In retrospect everything about the country was going well. The economy was booming. No-one really knew how nasty everything was going to get, beginning with Saipan. The all-time peak for Irish football, and for Ireland as a nation, was the 3-nil defeat of Denmark just before World Cup 2002. Duff’s performance in that friendly is possibly the greatest individual performance by an attacking player for Ireland ever, although these highlights don’t quite capture it:
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We hadn’t beaten a higher ranked nation at home in 14 years before MON decided to topple two of them in a month (Germany and Bosnia) in 2015. Euro 2016 was very enjoyable apart from a 30 minute period when Belgium tore us to shreds.
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