Days of Heaven (26 page)

It had to be the International, for this one, Liam and Arthur and George Byrne and I emerging again from the sanctuary of our homes to the relative sanctuary of our home away
from home — it meant we could partake of the community spirit while still drawing solace from these so-familiar surroundings, sitting up at the marbled counter with the telly in the top
right-hand corner where Gary Mackay had scored for Scotland, and with Simon manning the pumps.

The fact that we had a stool at the counter indicates that we got there early doors, to acclimatise, quite an achievement in itself on this day when no-one in Ireland was even pretending that a
day’s work would be done. As if watching Ireland v Romania playing for a place in the quarter-final of the World Cup wasn’t work. And all the drinking that had to be done to make it
even vaguely bearable could hardly be classed as anything but work, and essential work. There may have been a few people left in the country who regarded football at this level as a leisure
pursuit, but for the overwhelming majority, until the result was known, this would be a day of agonising toil.

They were three or four deep at the bar of the International by kick-off, and those of us who were fortunate to have a seat were unfortunate in having to lift pints back through the crowd.

The match itself was a disgrace, another 90 minutes and another 30 minutes on top of that with almost no football being played, apart from the odd little spasm by the Romanians, who then seemed
to concede that they were only codding themselves trying to play football against the likes of us. Even with the Berlin Wall down, those boys from Eastern Europe didn’t need much persuading
that the cynical option was the best, that you might as well play for penalties if they’re offered to you.

And though there was this underlying sense of inevitability that we would end up in a penalty shoot-out, it did not lessen the Fear in any way.

You could never entirely trust those Romanians to go with the flow, not with Hagi lurking there, a deeply troubling presence.

As for us, we had sort of got out of the habit of winning football matches, in the accepted sense. In the Compromise Rules format which we were perfecting, we favoured this idea of getting a
draw in such a way that it felt like a win. It was the smart response to that inherent design flaw of the system — that it was now very difficult for the other team to score goals, but it was
just as difficult for us to score goals. In fact, if you reminded a lot of folks that we hadn’t actually
won
the games against England and Holland, they would have given you a funny
look.

So with all the conviction that Jack had drummed into them, the lads had eventually imposed their will on the opposition, so that in Genoa, the Romanians ended up playing us at our own game
— playing for the draw and getting it.

The great moments are known to all — Packie’s save and his leap into immortality, George Hamilton bellowing, ‘The nation holds its breath!’, the entire squad running to
acclaim David O’Leary,
RTÉ
’s Bill O’Herlihy putting on a stupid hat with clapping hands on top, the
TV
pictures of the
uncontrolled weeping of John Healy at the
EU
summit which was happening around the corner from the International in Dublin Castle, Healy the reporter who had written the
most poignant lament for Paddy at his lowest moment in the 1950s, when no-one shouted stop.

Perhaps it was racing through Healy’s mind that the emigration which had torn the heart out of the country had somehow given us back a decent football team and brought us to this, forty
years later.

In the International we had entered some demented realm of magic realism. I looked behind me at a wall of people going mad with joy and one of them just happened to be a guy who had grown up a
short distance away from me in Athlone, a brilliant guitar player called Anthony Stapleton with whom I had played football on an under-12 team. We had been cheated out of a place in the final of a
local tournament by bad refereeing, which was one of the first really horrible things that happened to me in my life and which possibly scars me still. And now here was Anthony in the
International, the two of us roaring at one another.

And then he was gone.

There was something so strange about this, I would prefer not to dwell on it.

Strange too, that when O’Leary was announced as the next penalty taker, an inner voice told me that he would probably score, because I had this clear memory of him taking a few penalties
for the Arsenal. It was only much later that I was told that O’Leary had never taken a penalty in his life.

I have no idea where that voice came from, telling me of O’Leary’s expertise in dead-ball situations, but I suspect it may have been the baleful gods taking pity on me, feeding me
this false information to curb my anxiety. Or maybe it was just the drink.

And there was that image of Jack during the shoot-out, apparently in a state of total relaxation. Which could either mean that he was showing exemplary leadership as usual, exuding this sense of
inner calm which would be transmitted to his men and make all the difference, or that he really was completely relaxed because the job was done — whether we won the penalties or lost the
penalties, by not getting beaten at this stage of the tournament, it was now established as indisputable fact that we had not been disgraced.

Ah, he was so like us, in so many ways.

I remember him declining to say ‘An Bord Gáis’, which he insisted on calling ‘the gas board’. They could have told him to just pronounce it
Un Board Gosh
,
and maybe they did, but Jack would prefer to do it the way he wanted it, the way which made him comfortable, rather than run even the smallest risk of embarrassment.

He was so like us, the way we shudder when we see one of our own on the
BBC
, fearing that they will embarrass themselves and embarrass us in front of our mammies and
daddies, the Brits.

To avoid embarrassment — with Jack, as with Paddy, this was a holy thing.

Down, down we went to the basement lounge of the International, at that point of perfect happiness with the victory over Romania still vibrating inside us and the prospect of the quarterfinal
against Italy in the Stadio Olimpico a serene and beautiful vision.

Standing at the bar, waiting for another drink, I was seized by the urge to slam my fist down on the counter, at the good of it all. I had never before slammed my fist on anything, either in joy
or in sorrow — I was not a fist-slamming sort of guy — but there I was, slamming my fist on the counter.

Simon, who was busy filling pints, simply smiled.

There is a story from this time of a man — we’ll call him Kevin — in another bar, Fitzgerald’s of Sandycove. Kevin’s wife was at home in an advanced state of
pregnancy. Her friend rang the pub to say that his wife had gone into labour, the contractions had started. ‘Tell her I’ll be up when the penos are finished,’ he said.

When Kevin eventually made it home, his wife was in an even more advanced state of pregnancy. He sat in an armchair, while his wife counted between contractions. Then, overcome by the
day’s exertions, he fell fast asleep.

By the time his wife woke him up to drive her to the hospital, the streets were full of wild people, singing and dancing. Kevin had the window of the car rolled down and was shaking hands with
other fans. People were dancing on the bonnet of the car.

‘For Christ’s sake will you get them lunatics off the car and get me to hospital’, his wife screamed at him.

Kevin was feeling a riot of emotion. Torn between his elation at the result and the distressing condition of his wife, he drove as best he could through the open-air madhouse which the city had
become.

In the back his wife was now weeping with agony.

Observing the scenes of great joy through which they were moving, he tried to comfort her with soothing words like, ‘Where would you get it, eh?’

But her weeping only became more intense. At which point a large beery man, seeing her weeping, stuck his head through the window, and offered her these words of consolation: ‘Ah jaysus,
Missus, I know how you feel, I shed a few tears meself earlier on.’

T
he psychologists would probably tell you that we didn’t have a chance against Italy.

They’d say that you have to be able to visualise yourself winning. You have to genuinely believe you can do it. And of course you have to want it and need it, with every fibre of your
being. They would say that we had already got what we wanted. In fact, they would say that we had got more than we wanted, more than we could ever have visualised ourselves getting.

And they would probably be right. In the case of Jack, they would certainly be right.

Jack was just not the sort of fellow to indulge in flights of fancy: such things were not just foolish, they were unprofessional. In fact, the further we got in the competition, the greater the
risk that he would find himself re-living the latter part of his playing career with Leeds, challenging for the game’s most glorious honours and castigating himself for getting into all that
hassle: ‘How do we do it?’

Getting the job done ... achieving what you set out to achieve ... such an uncomplicated approach had got us to the last 16 of the World Cup. Getting to the quarter-final was just a supremely
happy accident. And in truth, most of us would have had that attitude. Looking back at what was a very bad World Cup in general, in terms of the quality of the football, you might say that we
weren’t greedy enough.

And maybe some of us learned our lesson and decided in the years to come that we could never be accused of that again.

But for now, we were sated. We didn’t want it all, because deep down, we felt that we already had it all.

Not that we didn’t want to beat Italy. In fact, so many wondrous things had been happening, we were prepared to entertain that fantasy, too. And even to imagine that the movie
mightn’t end there, that we might end up playing England in the World Cup Final, England who just happened to be in the other half of the draw.

So maybe we wanted it, but the shrinks would say that we didn’t want it enough. And we would all probably accept that we didn’t need it. As a small country, we had got so much out of
this so far. We had satisfied all the football needs we ever had and a few more we never knew we had.

At this stage of the tournament the bigger countries started to need it more. Germany needed it: just to ensure a decent welcome home, they needed to win the World Cup. Argentina needed it, even
though they had won it the last time. England needed it, but were never going to get it. Maybe even Cameroon needed it more than we did — the ageless Roger Milla with his four goals and his
dancing at the corner-flag seemed capable of anything.

Italy most certainly needed it. And they must have looked benignly at our lads on their big day out, having an audience with the Pope. Not unfamiliar themselves with the traditions of Roman
Catholicism, they would know that an audience with the Pope is something of a crowning glory, something you tend to get when you have already accomplished something, such, as, say, winning the
World Cup.

Certainly the Italian team wouldn’t be heading over to the Vatican in this fashion without the trophy. And it may have crossed their minds that the Irish were doing it at this stage,
because when the Pope had his audience the following week, they wouldn’t be around.

Perhaps it was this sense of an achievement being honoured which made us all take such a benign attitude to this audience with the Pope. Because lest we forget, in Ireland we had just spent most
of the decade embroiled in a sort of a religious war, in which one side was vehemently opposed to the power still being wielded and abused by said Pope and his minions.

If you wanted to be pedantic about it, you could say that the ‘diaspora’, which was so well represented by Jack’s squad, had contained an awful lot of unfortunate women who had
to leave Ireland to have their illegitimate children in England, spurned by a fearful nation which was taking its orders directly from Rome.

In fact, that would not be pedantic, it would just be true.

But the magic of Italia 90 was working here too, allowing us to leave aside our ideological differences and to look at this in the best possible light.

We would forgive the fact that the last time we saw John Paul
II
among the Irish, he was using Father Michael Cleary as his warm-up man. We would forget all the irreversible damage done to us by
what could broadly be termed ‘Catholic teaching’. We would rise above our reasoned arguments and see this instead as an emotional rather than a religious event, acknowledging that ours
had been a deeply Catholic country, in which many would see this as the ultimate honour, and they, too, have their story.

And we would observe that John Paul
II
had something which was lacking in most of Official Ireland, and Official Italy for that matter — a genuine love of football.