Days of Heaven (27 page)

We would see the deep devotion of men such as physio Mick Byrne, for whom this would be a great and solemn ceremony.

We first encountered Mick back at the airport hotel, during that interview with Jack for
Hot Press
, the one in which Jack called for draconian measures to be taken in the light of the
growing environmental scandal of fish-kills caused by slurry being emptied into rivers and lakes. But I had encountered Mick much earlier in my life, watching him scuttling across the muck of St
Mel’s Park with his bag of tricks, to treat the injuries of Athlone Town players.

Even as The Town’s physio he cut a most striking figure, as he was clearly fitter than any of the players. And with his evident sincerity, his fierce loyalty to the cause of Ireland, he
had now become a ‘character’ in the Charlton story, and a much-loved one. No-one in his right mind would begrudge Mick Byrne his precious moments in the presence of the Pope.

But according to legend, his experience at Italia 90 was not entirely an uplifting one. There is a story told in Andy Townsend’s autobiography,
Andy’s Game
(written with Paul
Kimmage) of a scene which unfolded in the foyer of the hotel in Palermo where the Irish squad was staying before the Egypt match, a scene which allegedly unfolded as follows:

The hotel was quite a modest, family-run operation, and some of the players were becoming increasingly bored. So it happened that players such as Townsend and Tony Cascarino were lounging around
the foyer of this hotel, with nothing to engage them except superb models of ships mounted on plinths, which the owner of the hotel had apparently assembled himself, using millions of matchsticks.
These ships were the great work of his life.

Seeing the lads so bored, a passing Mick Byrne felt that they needed a bit of diversion. Putting on his best Cockney accent, he began to sing and perform a version of ‘The Lambeth
Walk’ for them, there in the foyer. Which they were enjoying, up to a point. They said nothing about it, but they couldn’t help noticing that he was getting so involved in the
performance, walking backwards and forwards, that he was getting dangerously close at times to the model ships.

Too close, indeed.

Catastrophically close, as he bumped into one of them, and the whole damn thing was overturned during a climactic moment of the song.

Despite the desperate efforts of Byrne to catch the falling object, the great ship was destroyed.

As he surveyed the wreckage, they say that Byrne’s face was a vision of utter mortification. And then the owner of the hotel, hearing the commotion, burst through the door, to see his
beloved matchstick masterpiece lying in ruins. He was screaming in Italian. He was inconsolable. Mick Byrne could only keep repeating his apologies, crucified with shame.

For the footballers who had witnessed the accident, there was only one possible response to this developing crisis — helpless, uncontrollable laughter. In fact, they were laughing so hard,
as a thorough professional it may have momentarily occurred to Mick Byrne that they might do themselves an injury here.

But he would have to deal with that another time, as the owner’s wife had now arrived and was equally apoplectic.

‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,’ Mick repeated, as abjectly apologetic as it is possible for any man to be, talking to a stranger in a foreign language.

But then apparently a change started to come over him, because so unforgiving were the owner and his wife, so relentless their wailing and gnashing of teeth, that after about five minutes of
this they set something off in the too-noble heart of Mick Byrne. It seems they pushed him over the edge, into anger.

‘I no sorry with you any more,’ he said, a new note of defiance in his voice.

And he left them with this: ‘Fuck you, and fuck your boat.’

No psychologist could have relaxed the lads any better than Mick Byrne doing the Lambeth Walk. But it obviously hadn’t worked in Palermo.

We tried to tell ourselves that the total lack of expectation, the very fact that we didn’t need anything else from them, that they owed us nothing at this stage, would perversely bring
the best out of the team on the Saturday night in Rome.

George Byrne was in the International on the Friday night when he got a call on the pay-phone from the
Hot Press
— there was a ticket available for Rome and the Stadio Olimpico, did
he want to go? Thus George was at Busarus early next morning, getting the bus out to the airport. An elderly woman put her head around the door and spoke to the driver:

‘Is this the bus to Lough Derg?’ she asked.

As Father Trendy might have put it: ‘And you know, in a way ... it was’.

That lady may well have been the only living Irish person who was thinking about anything except Italy versus Ireland, though the actor Michael James Ford recalls that the Gate Theatre, perhaps
taking its spirit of independence a step too far, stayed open that night for its production of Steven Berkoff’s
Salome
, with cast and crew preoccupied by events in Rome, and an
audience with no Irish people in it, just a party of about 40 slightly bewildered American tourists.

But again the head-shrinkers would find it revealing that for many of us, this was going to be something of a family occasion. I had decided to watch this at home, with Jane and Roseanne, who
was now wearing a tiny green Ireland shirt. Looking back, it seems like one of those old photographs from the Second World War, in which the family gathers around the wireless to listen intently to
some news of vast importance, concerning the fate of the nation and of the world. No doubt there was a feeling that this was an occasion of such magnitude in the history of Ireland, we would have
to experience it together, as a family. It didn’t really occur to me at the time, that there was a tacit acknowledgment here, that the war was over. That literally, we were all going home.
That the time had come to return from the front to our loved ones.

Because football, at least if it’s being done properly, is just not a form of family entertainment. The reasons are hard to define, but I guess there is just too much rage in it, too much
inexplicable grief to be inflicting on the little ones.

It is not like rugby, where you can see the ladies of Munster at the airport bound for London or Paris to support the guys (always ‘the guys’, never the lads or the fellows, an
iron-clad class distinction there) looking forward to a wonderful weekend away, wining and dining and maybe taking in a show. Rugby doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter to the
multitudes and it doesn’t even matter a great deal to the aficionados, who are never down for too long after a defeat, because in the end they are all winners, all on the same side, with the
upper middle classes, against the common good.

And as for the Official Irelanders who came to the party around the time of Jack, football matters in a way that they do not understand, these dilettantes, these bandwagon-jumpers, these
corporate swine.

It is a thing of appalling intensity, a primal thing, at once both an individual and a tribal obsession. And somehow, along with all this borderline savagery, it is also beautiful. Albert Camus
knew this, with his line that everything he knew most surely about morality and obligations he had learned from football, and Eamon Dunphy, who would often quote Camus, knew it too.

So, as he sat in the Stadio Olimpico, watching Ireland going down 1-0, Dunphy was having none of this all-of-Ireland-in-it-together shit. If you want family entertainment, you should check out
Des O’Connor, baby! Dunphy lashed out a piece for the front page of the
Sunday Independent
which revisited his familiar themes — the betrayal of the finer traditions of Irish
football by this caveman attitude, the misuse by Jack of the talent at his disposal which, in better hands, might have taken us all the way.

Out on the running track, various other significant figures in Irish life were making their contribution to the night, adding touches of surrealism which could only come from Paddy operating at
full throttle. For a start there was the surrealism of this unrestrained celebration, after what had been a fairly comfortable win for Italy. For Jack, waving his tricolour, there was perhaps a
touch of relief to be going home. For everyone, indeed, there was maybe this feeling of relief that it was all over now, and this was the worst that had happened to us, a defeat by the narrowest
margin by the host nation.

Charlie Haughey was out there joining in the celebrations, and so was Chris de Burgh.

Perhaps predictably, people asked what the fuck Chris de Burgh was doing out there, but in fact, Chris de Burgh probably had more of a right to be out there than Haughey. Chris de Burgh is a
genuine football fan, a supporter of Liverpool
FC
: indeed, when full-back Markus Babbel was struck down by a debilitating virus, de Burgh made a personal intervention,
attempting to heal him with his powers.

He did not succeed. But he meant well.

And in Rome, he had entertained the team in their hotel, which helps to explain why he had access all areas. It fact, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Chris was going to see the
Republic long before he was in a position to get there in a private jet.

Haughey never gave a tuppenny damn about football, though in the heat of that Italian summer night, no-one would be reminding us of those invitations to Lansdowne Road from the
FAI
, which he had ignored. Some will say that this is what makes us unique, that it is impossible to imagine the Prime Minister of any other country in the world joining the
celebrations in this way, out on the running track, again leaving aside the minor detail that there was ostensibly nothing to be celebrating.

And maybe it is a good thing that our leader would do this, and the British Prime Minister wouldn’t. In fact, it would be hard to imagine the leader of Togo out there, with Togo’s
leading balladeer in close attendance.

It seems that Paddy is always destined to be the mad fella — even at the biggest party with an international guest-list, he will insist on it.

And it would be a good thing — in fact it would be a great thing — if this willingness of the Taoiseach to get down with the people was part of a broader story of sporting ambition,
with the government backing all sorts of sporting endeavours and rightly taking the credit for it.

But it wasn’t quite like that, in 1990.

For example, there was no 50-metre swimming pool in Ireland at that time, nor were there any plans to build one. There was hardly even a running track. And you don’t really need to know
much more than that, to form a view of Official Ireland’s commitment to sport, and Haughey’s entitlement to the cheers of the Green Army, on that night.

In Togo, they’d probably got around to building a pool, and maybe even filling it with water, some time back in the 1970s. But not in Ireland.

Still, it somehow suited our idea of life as a cabaret, to have Haughey there taking his bow at Italia 90, just as he materialised for Stephen Roche on the podium at the Tour de France.

Even Berlusconi, a man with no limits, who had contributed some of his own money to the betterment of football in his country, would not be seen celebrating on the pitch with the Azzurri when
they actually won the World Cup in Germany.

But that night in the Stadio Olimpico, we wound it all up with something akin to an open-air episode of the
Late Late Show
— a bit of Jack and the Boys In Green, a bit of Chris de
Burgh, a bit of Haughey, even a bit of Dunphy. And with the best wishes of the Pope still with us, a little bit of religion. And the entire country — and for once we literally meant the
entire country, every man, woman and child — watching it.

And Liam Brady watching it too, in his street clothes.

Ah, it was not right, in so many ways, and yet it still felt good to see us there, for once in our lives. It felt good to see Paul McGrath out there, with the world watching, displaying in one
movement down the right and a cross to the head of Niall Quinn, why we deserved to be there, for him if for no other reason.

But Walter Zenga saved the header, and we didn’t trouble him much after that.

Deep down we felt that maybe Packie could have done better with that shot from Donadoni, that he could have palmed it wide or over the bar or anywhere except straight to Totò Schillaci,
who was on fire.

But we just don’t have enough heroes to be casting them aside for one debatable indiscretion. And anyway, as a few more of us were starting to understand, that’s football.

You could even see a certain maturity in all this, in the way we were able to listen to what Dunphy was saying, and know there was something in it, and still give the lads the most massive
homecoming in Dublin on the day after they got knocked out. We had reached the last eight of the World Cup at our first attempt, and yet on the front page of the biggest Sunday paper we were
reading a lament.

And for that, Paddy can feel just a bit grown-up.

Not that he would sit with that feeling for too long. There would be a homecoming, with Jack becoming increasingly and understandably terrified that the children running alongside the bus would
be killed. But there was also the matter of England v Cameroon in the quarter-final.

There was still something in it for us, even on the day after we were finished.

The prospect of Cameroon and England was like waking up with a hangover after a party to realise another session has started in the pub up the road, and they’re asking for
you.

RTÉ
was still remarkably doing the right thing, covering the homecoming live, in its entirety. There are men of my acquaintance, hardened journalists, who have
been known to watch this on video after a few drinks and to have a good cry — though on the subject of crying, in the context of Italia 90, Jimmy Rabbitte in Roddy Doyle’s
The
Snapper
has this to say: ‘drunk doesn’t count’.