Best All-Ireland XI ever? ... any ideas?

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Originally posted by 1MickCollins
That's a bit hard on Terry Phelan at least he had pace unlike Harte and was easily a better defender, Harte simply can't defend.

How about Liam Daish as defender #4. Kerhanghan looked awkard but never let us down.

I think John Aldrige and Tommy Coyne would give our worst strikers a run for their money. Did Aldrige score against any decent team? Please don't mention the disallowed goal against Spain :)

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He scored 19 goals for us ffs. That's 2 off our best ever.

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Originally posted by Beavis
:eek: He'll be near enough veteran come Germany!
It's amazing how he broke into the side so late,he's only really been a regular since just before the Japan and Korea.
Robbie was our number 10 almost as soon as he became a wolves regular,how did Duff slip through the net til he was 22.We missed out on a good 4 years of Duff magic:(

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It took him that long to mature as a player. It's a pity, but, with luck, we've a good seven or eight years of Duffer magic ahead of us before he starts to fade.

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Originally posted by Pogsly
Would anyone care to put forward the worst Irish team ever ?

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What about Eamonn O'Keefe. Wasn't he the one that Eoin Hand picked to play at Wembley in 85 to bolster his transfer fee? Speaking of Hand, put that ****** down as the manager of any 'worst Ireland team.' :mad:

Best Irish XI

Jennings

Irwin
O'Leary
McGrath
Moran

Brady
Keane
Giles
Duff

Stapleton
Best

Jennings

Langan
McGrath
Moran
Irwin

Brady
Keane
Giles
Duff

Best
Aldridge

Subs: Given, Whiteside, Whelan, O'Leary, Stapleton

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Originally posted by lopez
Speaking of Hand, put that ****** down as the manager of any 'worst Ireland team.' :mad:

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Eoin Hand....the man that brought us to within a dodgy referees decision of qualifying for the 1986 World Cup Finals?? The man that left Jack Charlton with a squad good enough to qualify for future tournaments??
I think that it is you who is the ******, an very ignorant one at that!!

Could oul' Eamon Dunphy be in that worst eleven. Apart from letting the boys out of the barracks during a Millwall team photo did he do anything else of note during his career? Afraid i'm not alive long enough to have sees if he played as good a game as he talks.

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Originally posted by joeSoap
Eoin Hand....the man that brought us to within a dodgy referees decision of qualifying for the 1986 World Cup Finals?? The man that left Jack Charlton with a squad good enough to qualify for future tournaments??
I think that it is you who is the ******, an very ignorant one at that!!

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Hear, Hear. Though was it not '82 we narrowly missed out on due to a bought SOB ref?

Either way well said. As for Lopez ...:rolleyes:

Jennings

Donaghy
Irwin
McGrath
Lawrenson

Houghton
McIlroy
Grealish
Duff

Best
Givens

Should Danny Blanchflower not be included? Can't say i recall anything of him well before my time, but he certainly gets rave reviews when you read of his talents?

Very good point - Blanchflower was the main man in the North pre-Best and he would be pushng for a place in this team .

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Originally posted by joeSoap
Eoin Hand....the man that brought us to within a dodgy referees decision of qualifying for the 1986 World Cup Finals?? The man that left Jack Charlton with a squad good enough to qualify for future tournaments??
I think that it is you who is the ******, an very ignorant one at that!!

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As Lionel points out it was 82 that the dodgy decisions came. The 1984 and 1986 campaigns saw the worst football I have ever seen Ireland play. Imagine that performance in Basel but every game. 1-0 away to Malta, 2-3 at home to Holland after leading 2-0 (in the days when you could pass the ball back to the goalie all night:confused: ), 0-3 away to Israel (that was a nightmare), 1-1 at home to Norway, 1-4 at home to Denmark (the pain for me of that game only relieved by that morning's - and evening's - Ugandan discussions with a young Danish lady in a Gardner Street flophouse :eek: ) . Allowing a journalist to run against McCarthy to see who was faster (who was a better footballer would be more to the point as this wasn't the World Athletics Championship we're talking about). As for the squad he left Charlton, more like the squad that was left by Giles, ran finely for one campaign before ultimately falling to pieces under Hand's stewardship, and then being revived once more by a manager who knew what he was doing.

Ignorant? :rolleyes: Not too ignorant to see that your fondness, and that of Lionel, is somewhat clouded by the fact that he won the 1980 League with Limerick United by one point. That was about his limit as a manager: The bloke who got appointed Ireland coach because Paddy Mulligan had chucked a bun at a council member on the team coach years earlier. :D :p

Hand was a good manager. He won the league and cup with Limerick. He had his faults too.

He did a fantastic job during the 82 campaign. We were done in Paris and totally robbed in Brussels. Mr. Nazare from Portugal's display that night remains the worst in the history of football as far as I'm concerned. It also came out years later that Anderlect had bribed referees in Europe in 1982 - one wonders...................
Stapo's perfectly good goal disallowed, Gerets dive for the freekick wouldn't have got a penalty at Old Trafford even if it was VanN and Riley refereeing not to mention M<cDonagh been held down with both hands by Cueleman s for the late winner - 23 years on and the blood still boils........

Even despite all the above we ultimately missed out on goal difference as France put 7 past Cyprus on grass in Limassol while we won by 3-2 on sand in Nicosia (Belgium and Holland also won by only one goal on sand).

Hand lost the dressignroom after that - there is a well recounted incident of him annoucing the team and a senior player stood up and said No - this is the team......

As Lopez said it became a shambles by the Denmark game in 85.

BTW the F.A.I. official only thought Paddy Mulligan was the guy who threw the bun. Apparently it wasn't him. :) :)

BTW the Dutch team that came back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 at Dalyer contained Gullit and van Basten among others - ok maybe not one of our better nights but hardly a total disaster - Trinidad and Tobago and Norway home 85 really stand out for me and of course the Denmark game.

There was a very good piece a few years ago about that same Ref. I think it was in the Tribune. They interviewed the Ref asked him why he disallowed the goal. He game some reason, Offside I think. They showed him the tape. He suddently "remembered" he had a different reason. They then showed him another tape from a different angle. He couldnt justify why he disallowed it. Just said that he actually "likes the Irish".

EDIT just found the Tribune piece about it.

Its quite long.

Sunday Tribune April 28, 2002

THE afternoon swells hot and bright in Barreiro, the southern Lisbon suburb where the Tagus pours into the Atlantic. It is low tide and fishing boats are stuck fast in the sand, while the gulls comb the ground for lugworms and sing anugly squawking chorus. The man who was accused by Eoin Hand of taking a bribe, who drove Liam Brady to tears, who stopped perhaps the greatest Ireland team ever from going to the World Cup finals, sits in the corner of his favourite restaurant, admiring the scene, picking through his lunch of barbecued cod.

He's a simple, quixotic old man, unfailingly courteous, with a tendency to see events through a romantic scrim.

He is spry for his 64 years, immaculately turned out in a sober suit, a pink shirt with creases you could cut yourself on and a tie knotted with a neatness that hints at an obsessive nature.

It's more than 20 years since Raul Nazare's most controversial night's work in nearly four decades of refereeing, yet the impact of his decisions in Brussels in 1981 has never been forgotten. "It was a historic game and I was very aware of this, " he says.

"If Ireland had got a draw that night, they would have gone to the World Cup in 1982. If that happened, it would have been huge. And I honestly say to you that secretly I wanted Ireland to win, because they were more humble. They needed to go more. And because I liked Mickey Walsh. He played here, with Oporto. We were friends. He had the opportunity to score that night, but he missed so many times. I felt like biting his ears." His memory of what happened is oddly patchy. He remembers the lightning and the fire-hose from the heavens that almost caused him to abandon the match. And he remembers that the game turned ontwo vigorously disputed decisions, one at the end of the first half and one at the end of the second. First, he disallowed a perfectly legitimate goal by FrankStapleton; then he awarded Belgium a dubious free-kick from which they scored the winner three minutes from the end. "I know there was some agitation after the game, I think because all of the Irish knew they weren't going to the World Cup.

I will always remember what Walsh said to me. He said:

'Raul, I am very sad. The hearts of all the Irish nation are crying.'" Walsh, infact, called him a cheat, while Brady asked Walsh for the Portuguese word for thief, then confronted Nazare with it, jabbing a finger in the referee's face byway of punctuation. Hand recalls saying to Raul: "You're a disgrace. You've beenpaid off. You've robbed us." "I don't speak too good other languages, " Raul says, as he waves to some friends at an adjoining table. "But I was always very good at reading what was in a player's eyes.

One time, I refereed a match with Spartak Moscow and this player, he shouted something at me. I couldn't understand him, but I knew it was something bad, so I gave him a red card and he left the field crying. At half-time, the FIFA delegate came to me and said the manager of the team was warning the players: 'Be careful. That guy speaks Russian.' But in the game in Brussels, I saw only sadness in the eyes of the Irish players, regretting that they weren't going to be in the World Cup. And Walsh saying to me about the hearts of the Irish nation. I'll never forget that." He finishes picking the bones on his plate clean, lays down his knife and fork and frowns importantly. "My wife did not like me being a referee. Too dangerous. Too many police escorts out of stadiums.Not every wife is strong enough to be a referee's wife. Their life is very lonely. We have a daughter. Elsa is her name. When she was a little girl, she was a ballerina. I missed almost every show she did because I was never at home.It makes me sad to think about this." When he wasn't away refereeing, Raul worked as a trade union representative with Portuguese Telecom, where he's stillemployed, mostly brokering early retirement deals for older employees. His work takes him abroad to conferences, where he regularly meets Irish people who want to rake up the past. "My conscience is tranquil, " he says. "This is what I say to them. I tell them that yes I know I made the hearts of the Irish nation very sad when I disallowed that goal. But you Irish people have problems recognising that there was a fault." So, twenty-one-and-a-half years on, can he explain for the first time what the fault was? "Frank Stapleton was the fault, " he offers, folding his napkin in front of him.

"He was offside. I remember this very clearly. It was not really my decision, you see. It was the linesman who gave me the indication. When you are a referee,you have to have total trust in your assistants. And I say this as someone who has refereed many international matches and who was considered three times the Portuguese referee of the year, that when I made this decision I had the full conviction that I was doing the right thing at the time.

"No-one is perfect. Perfection does not exist. They said that Christ was perfect, but I am not so sure about that. I had a colleague in the World Cup in 1986. He was the referee for Argentina against England. Everybody in the ground saw Maradona score with his hand, except for him and his linesman. For one week afterwards, he did not sleep. He knows today that his mistake made Argentina thechampions of the world. When you are a player and you make a mistake, you can goand score a goal to compensate for this. When you are a referee, you have to live with what you have done." He says he's lived easily with what happened thatnight in Brussels. "It was not a goal, " he says, waving his hand blandly. "I spoke to the linesman after the game and also on the plane coming home. He told me he lifted his flag because he felt that Stapleton was offside. In fact, I remember now that I had blown the whistle before Stapleton touched the ball. So technically, you see, I did not disallow the goal, because there was no goal to disallow."

Has he ever watched a recording of the incident. "No, " he says. "Very few timesdo I watch matches that I have refereed." So would he like to see this one? "If you have the tape, I would like very much to see it." Raul's apartment, on the sixth floor of a dayglo pink flat complex, is much like the man himself, compulsively tidy with a polished, eager aspect to it. He owns the entire landing, he explains. Elsa and her husband, Antonio, live in the apartment next door and they too are crowded around Raul's widescreen television to watch this match they've heard so much talk about. Raul slides the tape out of its dust jacket, noting two peremptory exclamation marks written in biro after the words,'Ireland v Belgium' on the side of the tape. He looks at it quizzically. It's Eoin Hand's copy of the match, it's explained, and a grin flexes across his face. "Now, " he says, "I understand." He slips the tape into the machine and Stapleton's goal is replayed in 48-inch technicolour. Ireland have a freekick onthe edge of the Belgian penalty box. Brady is standing over the ball, Stapleton loitering around the penalty spot. Just before Brady chips the ball into the box, Stapleton makes a run for the near post, beats the goalkeeper to the ball and side-foots it into the net. The whistle is blown after the goal is scored.

Raul looks at the screen, his eyebrows are knotted in consternation. "Let me seeit again, " he says. Antonio rewinds the tape and once more Jimmy Magee's voice fills the living-room. Kevin Moran has come forward for it. Ireland have positioned Moran, number five, Stapleton, number eight, and Robinson, number 11.They're the only three.

There's nobody out of shot STAPLETON! The referee's going to disallow it, I think. Once more, controversy surrounds Ireland in an important match. Now what's the reason this time?
part 2 in next post

part 2

Raul gets up from the sofa and moves closer to the television. He asks to see the sequence a third time, watching it this time on his knees, his nose no more than six inches away from the glass. For years the idea that Stapleton was offside has salved his conscience, but here in front of him now there's this onerecalcitrant image that refuses to support his story. The linesman doesn't signal at all; not until a full three seconds after Raul has disallowed Stapleton's goal does he guiltily raise his flag. Can he explain this?

"I think, " he says, looking askance, "that I made a mistake when I told you it was offside. Yes, now I remember. I awarded an indirect free-kick. My hand is upto say it is indirect. And Liam Brady shoots direct . This is why the goal was disallowed. Nobody touches the ball before it goes into the goal." But Stapletonclearly does. He practically volleys the ball into the net. "Let me see it again, " he says, putting on his glasses. Antonio, a dutiful sort with milk bottle lenses and severely parted hair, obliges. "Yes, I can see now, " Raul says. "It goes straight into the goal." "My father-in-law is right, " says Antonio. "This Frank Stapleton man, he does not touch the ball." Antonio drops his credentials into the conversation. For a living, he sells slow motion technology to television companies. And this, he says, allows him to speak with conviction. "You see, " he says, rewinding the tape, then replaying it in quartertime, "the ball goes straight into the goal. Straight in. Not one man touches it." The slow motion replay clearly shows Stapleton catching Brady's free-kick on his instep.

"I do not like slow motion, " says Raul. "It flickers too much. You cannot see anything." "But father-in-law, " Antonio says, "you can see that the ball does not touch anyone." Elsa isn't so certain. She loves her father but watching the tape she can't help but think that the flight of the ball changed direction before it entered the goal. Raul suggests a smaller television and the debate repairs to Elsa's old room, where a 14-inch portable sits among a menagerie of stuffed animals. The incident is replayed again, four sets of eyes pressed closeto the screen. Stapleton's contact is even clearer on this television. Then Raulremembers something. He can't believe it didn't occur to him before.

"The ball hits off me, " he says. "It hits off my back and goes into the goal. Iremember now that that is why I disallowed it. Yes, you were right, it does change direction. But this is only because it hits me and not Stapleton." "My father-in-law is right, " says Antonio. "The ball hits his back and goes into the goal. Frank Stapleton does not touch it." "My position is not correct, " Raul acknowledges. When the free-kick is taken, he is running backwards towards the six-yard area, right into the eye of the action, where he collides with Walter Meeuws, the nearest Belgian player to the ball. It's doubtful whether Raul even saw the goal and might have instinctively disallowed it because he felt he'd unfairly stopped the Belgian defender from getting to the ball ahead of Stapleton. "I should have been at the edge of the penalty box, not in amongstthe players. Frank Stapleton, you can see, is trying to get to the ball, and hisinstinct is to get me out of the way." He uses Elsa and Antonio to choreograph the scene.

Antonio is Raul, Elsa is Meeuws, Raul is Stapleton. "So I'm in the penalty box, where I shouldn't be, and Frank Stapleton pushes me and he turns me." Antonio and Elsa perform an awkward do-se-do. "And when I turn, the ball hits off my back and it goes into the goal. I remember now." The evidence on the tape, though, is confounding.

You can watch the sequence a hundred times, until the image becomes a blur of Mondrian pixels, and you will never see what Raul claims happened. He is at least four feet away from the ball when Stapleton kicks it. "My father is right," says Elsa, but with little conviction.

The tape is forwarded to the other incident on which the game hinged. It happenson the very spot where Brady took his free-kick. There are three minutes left and the Belgians are becoming increasingly frustrated at being shut out. Eric Gerets takes matters into his own hands.

Meeuws sends a long ball over the top of the Irish defence and the Belgian captain takes a dive on the edge of the box.

His effort to win a free-kick is utterly artless. There isn't an Irish player within touching distance of him and he hits the ground some 10 yards away from where he left it.

Raul asks to see it again before he explains himself. "Yes he is clowning, thereis no doubt, but there is some physical contact with this player, Steve Heighway." The camera picked up no such contact. "You can't see it on the tape, but I could see it where I was, from the ground. Gerets makes a spectacle of himself, but he is touched. I admit it's a light touch, but this contact is there, I can promise you." The shell-games continue for 20 more minutes before the tape rolls onto what happens next. Rene Vandereycken sends a rasping shot over the Irish wall. The ball hits the top of the crossbar and flies high into the air. Seamus McDonagh, who dived to save the original shot, is lying in the mud and can't stand up in time to stop Jan Ceulemans climbing high over a posse of players to nod the ball into the net.

"Irish people say that this is the reason why your team never went to the World Cup, " he says. "It is because I gave the free-kick. But do they ever ask where are your defenders? Where are they when the goal is scored? Why do they not stopthe goal?" He is struggling to be believed now and he knows it. "And this Frank Stapleton goal that we watched, " he says, "why did he not protest to me? He just throws his arms open." Perhaps because Raul was already surrounded by furious Irish players? "No, it was because he knew he didn't touch the ball. It hit my back. And the Irish, they asked FIFA to investigate this and FIFA didn't even want to interview me. So this proves that my decisions were correct. Three times I won the golden whistle for being the Portuguese referee of the year. They know I am an honest man, that my conscience is tranquil." His defence is taking on a more desperate edge.

The sacred verities that give shape to his world are being challenged by a complete stranger and in front of the family he cherishes. Watching the footage of Hand accusing him of taking money and Brady calling him a thief would be pointless. He is having trouble enough with his compass now.

In the elevator, he does make one concession, a last effort almost to plea-bargain away his culpability. "I am very angry with myself because of my position for the goal, " he says. "This I admit. I was to blame, because I should not have been standing where I was, in amongst the players. Then it wouldnever have hit my back and Ireland would have gone to the World Cup." Out in thestreet, he performs a little mime act by way of a farewell, blowing an imaginarywhistle, then proffering an invisible red card and, as the car pulls off, pointing in the direction of the road, this bizarre little man who has been leftwith the shock of seeing ghosts he thought were long ago laid to rest.

Sóc. It's long, but I intend to read it. I missed what would have been my first game that night (my father had to work and I instead went to (my first visit to) Wembley to watch the tans against Spain instead). I'm glad I missed it. I heard later it was trouble from start to finish. London Irish hooligans kicking off on the boat over; Boat wrecked with IRA graffitti; violence on the terraces. It was so bad someone told me it made Capital Radio and the Evening Standard in London . As Gary said, Hand's deficiencies became evident afterwards during a period when the Irish players looked like they couldn't be ars*d turning up (E.g: Ronnie Whelan catching his finger in a cab door, missing the game in Rotterdam, then playing the following week).

Even if he didn't take a bribe (we'll never know) I'd have more respect for the senile auld b@stard if he admitted to being grossly incompetent.

Those two posts by SOC have to be the most amazing posts I've ever read . I knew of the controversy in Brussels that night but I never knew it was to that extent ,
truely amazing

Very interesting.Raul obviously had something to hide which he now regrets.Felt a bit sorry for him tbh but probably because I was only a sperm at the time and personally didn't miss out on anything...

That article!- Is it for real? I can't believe it!