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The lads from 'Off the Ball' just posted this on Facebook, thoroughly enjoyed it & thought others might too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v24UKqJIKm8.
Apparently they're doing an Italia '90 special on the programme on Monday night (8pm) which sounds like it could be worth a listen.
Seen it before but never tire of watching it.
Twenty years ago though where have all the years gone?
I think the 'noughties' have meant we skipped a decade - coz I sure as hell cant believe its 20 years ago!!!
Yeah - I still think of 2010 as the distant future.
By any chance is it a post apocalyptic future where air travel is no longer possible, the world economy has crashed like never before and Ireland have been cruelly denied deserved World Cup qualification? Let's hope it never comes to that!!!! :eek::eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Best trip ever.
I had my 7th birthday just before the tournament and had spent the previous few months in hospital with a broken leg(one of a few!).
Got to Belfast airport, back in the days where there was an RUC checkpoint outside. We had told we were going to London for a family wedding. Cop lent down to the window and went
"Where you off to Sir?"
Me da, turning round to me and the brother in the back
"We're off to the World Cup".
We went absolutely mental in the back. Unbelievable trip, all the way from the start to the end. Defo the summer that made me fall in love with football.
As sports shows go, off the ball is top notch imo...That clip would bring a tear to your eye, 20 yrs, scary too!
Was only a eight year old whipper snapper at time but can remember every game distinctively. That clip helps some up how the nation was at the time. Remember going through sligo town after Romania game in our Lada! hanging out the window and the streets were thronged with people celebrating. Never seen before or since... to think that some people see us as a rugby nation now, they have short memories.
Cant wait for armenia and slovakia trips this year. Had some great ones last year in Bari and Sofia in particular
Anyone else get the 1990 dvd that was with the indo on sat?? Didnt exactly portray us in a great light tbh. Although high praise for the fans, "more colourful than the brazilians"
started listening to this monday but after the first 10 mins was dominated by the drinking that went on by the Irish public and fans during the tournament i switched it off. that show usually does much betterQuote:
Originally Posted by eaststand85
Missed first 15-20 mins, switched on in middle of Dunphy intervew and thought it was pretty good from that point on anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by jbyrne
The worst part of that trip was the 20 hour train journey from Palermo up to Genoa.
You must have been on the express train - in my memory it felt like a lot longer than 20 hours. I then remember standing outside the stadium for hours in the heat trying to get tickets only to be told to come back the next day (to be fair to the FAI they did hand out numbers so that the day-trippers didn't get tickets ahead of the lads who traveled from Sicily). No such thing as booking tickets on the internet in 'dem days.Quote:
Originally Posted by finbarrk
That trip had so many highs, the celebrations for the Sheedy and Quinn goals, the agony/ecstacy of the penalties v Romania, and at the final whistle in Rome, the heart bursting pride in being Irish.For me, football just gets to you, like no other sport.
Now funny you talk about the train as I decided to take the ferry from Sicily and 24 hours later there I was , hey a nice snooose on the floor of the bar in my sleeping bag , ohh they were the days camping was a blast I must say .Quote:
Originally Posted by EastTerracer
Used to really like listening to Off The Ball on Newstalk, quirky & entertaining both. Until that is, when they did a review of Italia 90 with Declan Lynch from the Sindo, pushing his book about Italia 90, with all of them claiming among other things that:-Quote:
Originally Posted by eaststand85
- the soccer was awful;
- the soccer played by Ireland was awfuller still;
- we all thought Ireland played good soccer only because we were drunk all the time !!
Then they brought on Dunphy to give a totally one sided account of his brave crusade against "Jack's primitive football" including quote "Jack's disgraceful treatment of real football men like Lawrenson, Brady, Whelan & O'Leary" !! I flipped & sent em a text suggesting they ask Eamo:-
- how many Finals we qualified for in the many decades before Jack came along;
- what the term "decentskinsmanship" referred to in the case of Brady & O'Leary;
- how Charlton was responsible the Achilles Tendon injury that ended Lawrenson's career for both Club & country;
- who scored the winning peno against Romania; and
- why Dunphy's track record now includes the systematic undermining of at
least 4 ROI Managers (Hand, Charlton, McCarthy & Trapp).
Naturally they ignored the text ... and indeed went on to heavily promote Eamo's new Newstalk show on Sundays !!
What people like ED have consistently failed to understand or are too lazy to enquire into is that professional sport is as much about mentality as it is about pure talent. (E.g. Darren Clarke is a more talented golfer than Padraig Harrington but is as likely to win a major as me). What Jack brought was organisation, a defined system that people didn't have to like but had to implement, Most importantly he brought a mentality that said we will impose our game on the other side. We took the initiative. Jack has league, cup and world cup winners medals. He has managed at club and international level. His record for Ireland is qualification for 3 of the 5 torunaments we entered with him as manager. The ones where we missed out included one where we were unbeaten through the qualifiers,
In the others we went out in a play off. By comparison, Dunphy is a minnow. His cricisisms are as relevant as those of a grafton street busker as to the way the Berlin Symphony is currently playing. He is entitled to his opinion like any punter but it
is not what HR consultants refer to a peer review
...and then I almost crashed the car when I heard Giles say after the Inter vs Barc match on Newstalk the following night: "Football isn't about being pretty. It's about being effective". AFter 22 years of slating Jack...
You obviously weren't on the catamaran organised by Dave Bacuzzi travel from Palermo to Cagliari for the England game. Hours upon hours in really choppy, stormy conditions. I was about the only guy on the boat not seasick and had to hold plastic bags to passengers' mouths as they threw up. The brochure advertising the trip said it was a 2 or 3 hour journey. I think it was closer to 8. We got in the Cagliari port with only about 40 minutes to go before the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by finbarrk
The Palermo - Genoa trip seemed to take ages. We changed train in Milan. The Genoa train was about to depart and there were still about 20 Irish yet to get a ticket. The guy at the front took a quick count and put all the tickets on his credit card, all for strangers. He got paid back on the train. Great gesture.
Great trip, unbelievable stuff. Luckily I had just left college and had no job to go back to. I stayed for over 4 weeks. Magic.
The interrail pass was a great man back then, about £200 got you all over Europe for a month. Mine was running out after the Genoa match cos I had gone to Amsterdam and other places before the tournament so I couldn't stay for Rome. I remember buying a lad from Leitrim a ferry ticket from France to Rosslare cos he was broke and the money arrived in the post to me afterwards. I also got to see Argentina V Brazil in Milan on the day before our Genoa game.
Everything worked out so well for me , I just flew in for India,where I was backpacking so no job to go back to sort of thing
Got to Rome then headed out for the first game never had a ticket for any of the games and I managed to see all the Ireland
games Itlay v Argentina ( at last got to see Deigo play ) and picked up a ticket for the final in Rome also and paid £25 over
the odds for the ticket off a yank on the day .
Yer poor final but I can say I will always be one of the few who has seen a world cup final well maybe a millionor so of us alive today .
Those were the days .
I think Lynch's book is more about the country at the time rather than the football. However I haven't read it.
We managed to avoid all the awful ferry journeys. Car and tent but got the ferry to/from Civitavecchia (north of Rome) to Sardinia and drove down to Sicily and back up north then.
We stayed for the final too. We had them going out but no problem with tickets once Italy went out. Have been to all the world cups since but never seen a final since.