The decade began with a bang.
Irish football booting the pub doors open at closing time and refusing to leave. Italia ’90 did more for the Irish game than any tournament before or since. It brought everyone in the country together. And we really do mean everyone. For a few wild weeks, football tapped into the Irish psyche in a way it never had before. Packie Bonner’s save. David O’Leary’s penalty. Ireland, to a first-ever World Cup quarter-final. The nation delirious, barely able to catch its breath.
Euro ’92 was a write off but only eight teams qualified so it barely mattered anyway. USA ’94. Now that mattered. Italy was one thing. Plenty of crap acts crack Europe. Cracking America is for the big boys. Ireland scraped through on goal difference, making up for what they lacked in style with personality.
Ironically, it was Italy that helped them to their global hit. Ireland 1, Italy 0. Ray Houghton’s looping strike over Gianluca Pagliuca sent shockwaves around the world, hundreds of millions watching on their swelling television screens. The Irish diaspora became part of the myth themselves. New York became Dublin-on-Hudson.
It was always the Irish way, to export joy across the world. Could it last? It didn’t need to, really. They had already given us one of the defining moments of arguably the greatest World Cup ever played.
Roy Keane reflected on the about the amount of pints that were drank by the team at their pomp (never mind when they were past it), and admitted there was a Guinness tap on the floor of the hotel where the team were staying during the 1994 World Cup. "When I saw our lads go there for breakfast, it did concern me! Listen, I was the first in the bar; don't get me wrong. But that was the time, 1994. If you saw a team doing that now.... but we also had good players. Really good, experienced players that knew and always had the balance right. Honestly."
By the middle of the decade, Ireland were punch-drunk. The legs were heavy, the nights out longer than the training sessions. If they looked battered it’s because they were.
Euro ’96. France ’98. Euro 2000. Each slipped by without the Irish. The old guard spent, the new crop not yet strong enough to resist the bad habits that crept in. Or, in truth, good enough.
One man, of course, refused to accept that fate. One player who would light a fire under Irish football, and later under himself, at the start of the next decade. In Saipan.
Looking back, the decade ended after four years. But give us four good ones over ten average ones any day of the week.
Words by Lee Kelleher.
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