Ireland V Estonia - Tuesday, 15th November 2011 - Euro 2012 Playoff 2nd Leg

[paul_oshea]

wow what a week for me some stories to boot as well.

Terrible game, Ward offers far more than kilbane going forward. Im still suspect of him at the back. Im begining to think that the 4-0 was out of character and just one of those nights as opposed to something we have been building up to.

Anyway we qualified great night was had in flannerys and coppers and ray houghton not taking any pics as he tried to skip the queue into coppers :)

[fionnsci]

http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=6196

[geysir]

http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=6196

Well done Fionnsci, but judging by the dearth of satire comprehension at TCD, perhaps "you should have gone to UCD".

[pineapple stu]

You can get one on Cult Zeros (http://www.cultzeros.co.uk/search.asp), just search for Richard Dunne
Excellent spot - bought!

[pineapple stu]

You can get one on Cult Zeros (http://www.cultzeros.co.uk/search.asp), just search for Richard Dunne
Excellent spot - bought!

[Charlie Darwin]

That's my entire family sorted out for Christmas presents this year.

[OwlsFan]

This one I took is slightly out of focus. It was more for the Sligo Hornets flag and I wonder is that our Sligo Hornet?

1808

[DeLorean]

I must have passed ten people selling programmes on the way towards the stadium. For some reason I decided to wait until we got into the ground to buy them but they were all sold out. In the unlikely event that any of you have a spare (or a couple of spares) I'd be really grateful if you could PM me. Obviously I would pay for the postage as well. Thanks!

[tetsujin1979]

This one I took is slightly out of focus. It was more for the Sligo Hornets flag and I wonder is that our Sligo Hornet?

1808It is, I met him with it in a bar in London before the Colombia game befoer
Incidentally, that Richard Dunne flag, among others, was stolen by some scumbags and the YBIG lads are out for blood to get it back

[elroy]

Apparently a couple of those flags were stolen the other night, the god save the queen one and I think the iron curtain one included. Terrible. The YBIG lads went to collect them after the game and they were gone. Like what anyone would be stealing them for god only knows. But if anyone has any info please get in touch

[geysir]

Very bad form that.

I saw that Duff was given a flag to wave around on the lap of honour, did that make its way back?

[paul_oshea]

I must have passed ten people selling programmes on the way towards the stadium. For some reason I decided to wait until we got into the ground to buy them but they were all sold out. In the unlikely event that any of you have a spare (or a couple of spares) I'd be really grateful if you could PM me. Obviously I would pay for the postage as well. Thanks!

I was just about to post this on the fans forum as i did the exact same....

ANyone have a spare, ill sort out all costs etc?

[Stuttgart88]

I didn't steal the Iron Curtain flag, honest.

During the lap of honour I thought our team were a bit parsimonious towards the corner of Estonian fans who were very generously and enthusiastically applauding our guys. It looked like our guys just walked past them.

[tetsujin1979]

I was sitting close to that end, they passed the Estonian fans, then stopped in front of us (more or less in line with the penalty area at that end), applauded and then continued along

Thought Stephen Hunt booting the balls into the crowd was a nice touch!

[shakermaker1982]

who steals a flag? Cretins.

[Fixer82]

I was getting annoyed with morons balling up the '3' cards and throwing them down at people. Saw one 5 year old kid get hit in the face and a middle-aged woman get hit in the back of the head by one. I saw a man of about 45 with his son doing this among others, mostly kids/teenagers in fairness. IDIOTS!!!

[theworm2345]

I was getting annoyed with morons balling up the '3' cards and throwing them down at people. Saw one 5 year old kid get hit in the face and a middle-aged woman get hit in the back of the head by one. I saw a man of about 45 with his son doing this among others, mostly kids/teenagers in fairness. IDIOTS!!!
In fairness, that sounds hilarious. Could be much worse, you could be Kilbane getting hit by a knife in Georgia, a fan in Mexico hit by a cup of ****, or a T&T fan in Guyana getting pelted with foreign objects as there were last Friday. Honestly what would you expect in a dead rubber match with a ton of bandwagonnists around? Apparently the wave was going up early in the first half which is a sure sign of boredom. Poor planning by YBIG (if it was them who put them out as it was in 2009).

[Stuttgart88]

It was the sponsors, not YBIG.

[the bear]

some of the airplanes were brilliant one made it right across the pitch to the far stand

[Sullivinho]

In fairness, that sounds hilarious. Could be much worse, you could be Kilbane getting hit by a knife in Georgia, a fan in Mexico hit by a cup of ****, or a T&T fan in Guyana getting pelted with foreign objects as there were last Friday. Honestly what would you expect in a dead rubber match with a ton of bandwagonnists around? Apparently the wave was going up early in the first half which is a sure sign of boredom. Poor planning by YBIG (if it was them who put them out as it was in 2009).

To this day Shay Given insists there were live grenades thrown at him out in Tehran. :D

[backstothewall]

To this day Shay Given insists there were live grenades thrown at him out in Tehran. :D

How would a man from Lifford know what a live grenade sounds like?

[Kingdom]

It is, I met him with it in a bar in London before the Colombia game befoer
Incidentally, that Richard Dunne flag, among others, was stolen by some scumbags and the YBIG lads are out for blood to get it back

We are. I will spill blood over this. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was the stewards.

[Kingdom]

Two have turned up - some young lad woke up with them in his bed and emailed YBIG. Fair play to him.

[SwanVsDalton]

Two have turned up - some young lad woke up with them in his bed and emailed YBIG. Fair play to him.

Woke up with flags? He's doing it wrong...

[the bear]

Woke up with flags? He's doing it wrong...

let's hope there not up the pole:cool:

[Sullivinho]

Woke up with flags?

Who'd have thought the difference between an act of petty thievery and a gay orgy was the letter L!

[Stuttgart88]

He misheard his mates. Go find a couple of slags, they said.

[DeLorean]

I was just about to post this on the fans forum as i did the exact same....

Anyone have a spare, ill sort out all costs etc?

I emailed the FAI to see if they had any left over Paul. They are out of them at the moment but the girl there has put in an order to get some more. She said she'll get back to me when they arrive.

Email: info@fai.ie

[DeLorean]

Many of you have probably read this already but I really enjoyed it!


Silencing the chorus of boos


By Eamonn Sweeney
Sunday November 20 2011



Most of the talk about Ireland's qualification for next year's European Championships seems to centre on the joys which await us in the future. Yet while it's well worth anticipating the spring which the tournament will put in our national sporting step next summer, the successful conclusion to the campaign is also significant as marking the end of an era.

And a peculiarly unlovely and dispiriting era it was too, one during which the members of our national soccer team became the butt of ridicule and abuse to an extent which had never happened previously. To judge by the joyous scenes at the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday night, we have fallen back in love with the team and qualification has drawn a line under the unhappy recent past. It's about time.


The process by which the team turned from national darlings to something approaching national pariahs can be traced back almost ten years to Saipan where we endured our own version of The Dreyfus Affair. Yet, oddly enough, in the immediate aftermath of the 2002 World Cup the boil seemed to have been lanced thanks to a series of spirited performances in the tournament.


Then defeats by Russia and Switzerland were followed by the resignation of Mick McCarthy. There was also the publication of Roy Keane's autobiography, a terrific read in which ghost-writer Eamon Dunphy demonstrated his enviable powers of invective and recast the Manchester United star's falling out with McCarthy as a kind of crusade against national mediocrity. That reading of the Saipan affair became a highly influential one. It seemed to strike a chord with the zeitgeist of the Celtic Tiger era, Keane's bullishness appealing to everyone who liked to see themselves as fearlessly thinking outside the box or pushing the envelope.


All of a sudden Mick McCarthy was berated for being insufficiently ambitious. Ireland, we were informed, should be going to World Cups looking to win the tournament. And, astoundingly, the Jack Charlton teams which had probably given this nation its greatest moments of collective joy suffered a kind of retrospective devaluation as they were berated for not living up to some Platonic ideal of sparkling football which no-one had ever actually seen an Irish team play. It was a bit like complaining that your wife doesn't look like Nicole Kidman without copping on that if she did look like Nicole Kidman she probably wouldn't be your wife.


It was open season on not just the national team but on the FAI in general and John Delaney in particular. Brian Kerr had been a hugely popular figure within the game before he succeeded McCarthy as manager but the general air of dissatisfaction meant no mercy was shown when he narrowly missed out on qualification for the 2006 World Cup. An apparently embittered Kerr, Keane-like, joined the army of snipers on the sidelines. The stage was set for the farce of the Staunton era.


Yet even during those disastrous years some of the criticism seemed wildly disproportionate. Both rugby and Gaelic games were used as sticks to beat soccer with. Pundits who should have known better consoled themselves for their disappointment over the GAA's Faustian pact with the FAI which let soccer on to the hallowed ground of Croke Park by yammering on interminably about the superiority of the noble breed who played Gaelic football and hurling.


The idea that someone who got paid for playing sport was somehow intrinsically inferior to someone who didn't got a regular run-out in those quarters. It was as though we were back in the era when English cricket sniffily divided participants into Gentlemen and Players. There were even suggestions that success for the soccer team might not necessarily be a good thing because it might lure GAA players away from their native games.


A perfect storm of negativity held sway. Just after Staunton finally resigned, I met John Delaney. He'd just finished reading an article which said that the only world-class coaches in Irish sport were those involved in Gaelic football and hurling. It was, he pointed out, an argument too stupid to refute. Meanwhile, we got chapter and verse in the papers about the sick culture inhabited by professional soccer players. The spectacle of Robbie Keane having a few pints and singing a song in the pub had to be inflated into a moral tale for our times, an indictment of both the player and his game.


We should have run out of negative energy by the time Giovanni Trapattoni was announced as Staunton's successor. Because to secure the services of a manager who had won the European Cup, three UEFA Cups, a Cup Winners' Cup, seven Serie A titles and the Bundesliga was a genuine coup for the FAI. Yet they received little praise for doing so and the focus instead switched to Denis O'Brien ponying up some of Trap's wages. Soon the cynics were able to focus on the omission of Andy Reid , a player whose reputation seemed to grow every time he was left out of the squad. Some credence was even given to the giddy ramblings of Stephen Ireland .


You'd have presumed that Trapattoni's CV meant we'd have given him creditfor knowing something about football. Not a bit of it. The man was a fossil who was actually holding our players back and preventing them from playing that famous sparkling brand of football which lay dormant somewhere within the team's psyche. One night on RTE Eamon Dunphy said that we had some of the best players in Europe. Poor Liam Brady nearly fell off his chair.


In reality, Trapattoni was doing well with a limited bunch of footballers yet as recently as the Slovakia game just over two months ago the team was booed by their fans at the Aviva. Sometimes the last ten years can seem like one chorus of boos after another. With these shouts of derision ringing in their ears, Ireland went to Russia and battled heroically for a point. Next up came Armenia and Estonia. The era of negativity was about to end.


There can be no arguing with the magnitude of Trap's achievement. Ireland were the lowest ranked team to qualify. At the time the draw was made we stood 25th in Europe. The next lowest ranked team to make it through were the Danes in 16th. Switzerland (13), Serbia (14) and Turkey (15) won't be there but Ireland will.


In the end the manager's big decisions were vindicated, sometimes spectacularly so. Simon Cox was a controversial choice to start as striker against Armenia. He ended as man of the match. Jon Walters seemed an odd choice to lead the line out in Estonia but he also had an outstanding game. Our best player in Tallinn was Keith Andrews, the guy whose presence in the team ahead of Andy Reid once irked so many people (I was one of them). Andrews may not have the natural talent of Reid or Ireland but he bought into the system, grew in stature and repaid Trapattoni's faith fivefold.


You know who else has been vindicated? John Delaney for his bold decision in appointing Trap. And Denis O'Brien for making sure we had the money to do so. It sticks in some people's craws to praise either but credit where credit is due.

We'll have a lot of fun next summer. The country needs this at a time when our morale has taken blow after blow, at a time which is spookily reminiscent of those dire '80s days which were enlivened by Jack Charlton's great team. Saying it doesn't matter whether we have international success because we always have the GAA is to be ludicrously parochial. And rugby, though it's grown hugely in popularity in recent years, still doesn't attract the same level of support that the national soccer team does when it reaches a major tournament, something we've only done on four previous occasions.

Perhaps the nattering nabobs of negativity will try to persuade us that the jury is out on Trapattoni until we see how the team does in Poland and the Ukraine. It would be a crafty face-saving move because we might well be the weakest team there. But I don't think anyone will fall for it at this stage. The man was hired to get us to the finals and that is what he has done. The dog days are over.


And thank God for that.

[nigel-harps1954]

Quality article. Really well written.

[geysir]

It's an excellent article.

It should also be noted with interest, that while central midfielder Keith Andrews got the motm award in Estonia, his partner Glenn Whelan got the motm in the home game.

[DeLorean]

I loved the Nicole Kidman analogy!

[tetsujin1979]

Sweeney's come a long way since this: http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/vendetta-is-an-italian-word-2382953.html

[Wolfie]

Sweeney's come a long way since this: http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/vendetta-is-an-italian-word-2382953.html

I distinctly remembered that article and was searching for it.

Isn't great to see someone nail their colours to the mast and have the conviction and integrity to convey a consistent message. :rolleyes:

[geysir]

That's gas by Sweeney, some transformation in just a year or has he a split personality?
If his latest article is to be believed, then he must truly loathe the other half of himself.

[DeLorean]

I actually remember reading that article also but didn't realise it was Sweeney (well I'm sure I did at the time). Holy God!

[osarusan]

Sweeney's come a long way since this: http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/vendetta-is-an-italian-word-2382953.html
When I read the linked article I thought to myself, "Eamon Sweeney hasn't always been so positive, has he?", but didn't think to look further. Fair play Tetsujin for pointing it out.

[Kingdom]

Yeah if the young wan is one of these guys from South Park
http://www.spscriptorium.com/Season5/TheThompsons.jpg

The "wan" is bending forwards of course - the classy, southside way. If I'd meant a girl with a face like an ar*e, I'd just have said Mary Harney.

[theworm2345]

The "wan" is bending forwards of course - the classy, southside way. If I'd meant a girl with a face like an ar*e, I'd just have said Mary Harney.
If you're bending forward that much you'd probably be giving yourself a golden shower.

[DeLorean]

Bumping thread.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DQwb652-Rs

[DeLorean]

Closed thread.