Days of Heaven
Authors: Declan Lynch
Contents
3. The Re-unification of Ireland
5. Sometimes You Just Can’t Make it On Your Own
6. This Was Not a Football Match
8. A Sophisticated and Responsive Regulatory Environment
15. Outside, it’s Latin America
INTRODUCTION
W
hen it was suggested to me that I write about my recollections of the Charlton years, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Italia 90, my thoughts naturally
turned to a scene in a toilet in New York City.
It was a Sunday afternoon in June 1988 and the toilet was in a bar on 7th Avenue called Mulligan’s, which, by an extraordinarily happy accident, was also the name of the pub on Poolbeg
Street in Dublin where I was doing much of my drinking back home — oh, how I laughed as I supped another glass of Schlitz and marvelled at a world which could contain such coincidences.
But then it had been a weekend of marvels.
I had been sent to New York to do a feature on Christy Moore for the
Sunday Independent,
for whom I had just started to write, mainly about Irish show-business personalities — the
first was Hal Roach, then there was Sonny Knowles, so it must have seemed logical at the time to move on to Christy Moore. A lot of things seemed logical then, which do not necessarily seem logical
now.
And this would not be the usual 800-word profile. It would be a special four-page glossy pull-out, illustrated with pictures of Christy stretching back to his childhood, to mark not just the
life and times of the greatest living Irishman, but the fact that he was in New York to play the Carnegie Hall.
This was big stuff. Big enough for me to be accompanied by one Donal Doherty, an
Independent
photographer of renown, the sort of crack lensman you can still see on
RTÉ
’s
Reeling In The Years
, taking pictures of Charlie Haughey in the throes of some nightmarish Fianna Fáil heave. A man who had been a witness to various
national traumas, which perhaps helps to explain why he was happy to be in New York on this particular weekend.
Because back in the old world, on the day after Christy played Carnegie Hall, the Republic of Ireland would be playing England in Stuttgart in the first game of Euro 88. Which was big stuff,
too. And which will eventually bring us back to that scene in the toilet of Mulligan’s of 7th Avenue.
But first I should mention that we flew to New York via Heathrow, where we saw George Best. He was catching a flight to America, too. Perhaps it was just coincidence that the most gifted player
ever to come from our island needed to be on another continent, perhaps even another planet, on the weekend that the Boys In Green were stepping on to football’s main stage. But at that
moment I thought, it must be a great life George has, heading off to California unencumbered, whenever he feels like it, while the likes of me and the crack lensman are lugging our kit through the
airport, the fear rising within us that we are going to miss our flight and miss all that big stuff. Airport security made Doherty empty out every roll of film he had in his large box of
photographic tricks while the plane was revving up and seemingly certain to go without us. Ireland, lest we forget, was a world leader in terrorism at that time.
Even though it was general knowledge that he was an alcoholic, I did not know enough about alcoholism then to come to the more likely conclusion, that George was probably not sauntering off to
some rendezvous on the West Coast without a care in the world, but was almost certainly boarding a flight for god-knows-where, with about ten dollars in his pocket and nothing else left in the
world except the clothes that he wore and the inescapable fact that he was still George Best. Nor did I understand at any meaningful level that the Republic’s best-loved footballer, on whom
we would perhaps be depending most in Stuttgart, the great Paul McGrath, was himself very far gone down that line. In fact, I did not even know enough about alcoholism then to know that I was
getting a touch of it myself.
But I thought I knew about it. I was planning to raise the issue with Christy Moore when I sat down with him in some hotel room in New York — if we ever got there, which, as the Heathrow
security men emptied the 54th tube of Donal’s film out onto the counter, seemed unlikely.
Christy at the time was one of the few famous Irishmen who had spoken openly about his tragic love affair with the bottle, and indeed had written a song about it, ‘Delirium
Tremens’.
Yes, I would be asking him about that.
Not that this flood of recollections will be all about drink, by any means. But I sense that most readers, being honest, would have to agree that it must be at least
partly
about drink.
That when they look back on those days, on Euro 88 and Italia 90 and the rest of what we call the Charlton era, it certainly wasn’t all about football. It was an overwhelming combination of
so many things, a journey the like of which we had never made before, and all we know for sure, is that very few of us made it entirely sober.
But we got to New York anyway, the photographer and I.
We got to the Sheraton Hotel on the Friday night and soon I was in Mulligan’s bar on 7th Avenue, having a beer and watching a baseball game on the
TV
. And then the
lads from the Gate Theatre arrived in.
In what now seems like some sort of a montage of the emerging Irish nation, the Gate Theatre was on Broadway with its production of
Juno and the Paycock
, directed by Joe Dowling, starring
Donal McCann and John Kavanagh, on the weekend that Christy Moore would play Carnegie Hall and the Republic would play England in Stuttgart.
Interestingly, though we had been living through a troubled time in Ireland, we were still capable of sending high-class stuff to America, despite it all, perhaps because of it all.
Juno
was great, but no doubt it was happening at least partly because of its continuing relevance to ‘the situation’, the fact that there was still an
IRA
, capable of
an atrocity such as the Enniskillen bombing, little more than six months before.
I think it was the actor Donagh Deeney, who was playing The Furniture Removal Man in
Juno
, who brought me into the company that night in Mulligan’s bar. Maybe it just happened by
that ancient process of recognition that always draws Paddy to Paddy, on foreign soil.
I can’t remember if Joe Savino was there. Joe was playing Johnny Boyle in
Juno
. From the days when he sang in a rock ’n’ roll band, I had run into Joe on many occasions
in my life, almost always in bars, and almost always when, by some unhappy accident, I had been drinking more than he. Over the years, I must have talked more shit to Joe than to most people. Which
means that a fog of guilt and denial descends upon me whenever I think of him.
But if he wasn’t there, he should have been.
We were all so excited about everything. We were so excited to be in New York; we were particularly excited to be in a bar in New York with so much to look forward to, be it Christy at the
Carnegie Hall or
Juno
, which was starting its previews the following Wednesday in the John Golden Theatre, or Ireland playing England.
Not that we were looking forward to Ireland playing England in the same way that we were looking forward to the other stuff.
Because, as well as excitement, there was also a deep fear in our hearts, as we faced into that battle. A fear that Jack’s team might be no good, after all, and that they would get beaten
by England, not just 2-0 or something vaguely respectable, but beaten badly. Beaten out the door.
As we proceed with this thing, we will examine this fatalistic streak in the Irish character, and how the events of the Charlton years challenged us to look at ourselves anew in this regard. To
see ourselves as people who did not always need to be afraid of making eejits out of ourselves in the international arena.
But on this Friday night in Mulligan’s of New York, we were still on the cusp of all that. We were somewhat astonished to be at Euro 88 at all, but we still harboured that fear that on
Sunday we would be found out, in the most disgraceful way.
Yes, these men who were talented enough and ambitious enough and self-confident enough to be standing on the Broadway stage alongside your Donal McCanns and your John Kavanaghs and your Maureen
Potters, essaying the work of O’Casey in front of the most brutal critics of the New York theatre, were not immune to these old, old fears.
Elsewhere in the city, during that Broadway run, my friend Philip Chevron of the Radiators and The Pogues would be having a night off from Poguetry in order to give the town a new lick of paint
with said Maureen Potter. And he believes that fellow Pogue, Terry Woods headed off into the Manhattan night with his buddy Donal McCann. Chevron also believes he drank with the actor Mick Egan,
who played the Sewing Machine Vendor, in
Juno
. And Shane MacGowan was out there too, doing what Shane does, in New York.
And all of these Irishmen and women, even the most illustrious of them, at the peak of their powers, would have had their moments when they feared chaos on an unprecedented scale in Stuttgart.
Chaos, and ultimately catastrophe, for the Republic.
There was also the lesser fear that most of us here in New York on this weekend wouldn’t actually see the match. Many of us, in fact, were secretly relieved that we wouldn’t see it,
that we would be spared the truth being shoved in our faces.
It must be remembered that even in America back then, there were few big screens in bars, and even fewer showing ‘soccer’ matches. There was also the time difference which meant that
even if the company at the Gate could commandeer some bar in Queens or wherever, the match would be happening on Sunday morning, New York time, which effectively ruled out myself and the
photographer, who were due to fly back on the Sunday afternoon. And even if we somehow found a bar with a
TV
showing soccer on
ESPN
and a very fast
car, we were haunted by the certainty that the snapper’s suitcase would be emptied out and inspected for about two hours on the way back.
And that would be too much — that, on top of some terrible slaughter.
——
But the Furniture Removal Man and the other guys in Mulligan’s were quietly confident that they would actually see the match — Donal McCann had sussed out a place,
apparently. Or not, as the case may be.
