Ireland's best goal - nominations and rules

So following on from a musing in SkStu's other thread, I'm going to give this tournament a go. foot.ie decides - Ireland's best ever goal.

Format
The format will be a straight head-to-head (maybe with a preliminary round or an initial qualifying stage to get us to a round number first). I'll try post two bouts per day, and the one with the most votes over 24 hours will go through to the next round. Last one standing is our best ever goal.

Nominations
I'm going back through the YouTube archives to dig up as many good nominations as I can - but if you want to nominate one (or more), you can. Just PM me a link to the goal, ideally on YouTube so I can embed it. Let me know scorer/match/year as well if it's not obvious from the clip (or if it's one goal from a full match highlights) I'd ask you not to post it here cos that'd ruin the element of surprise a little bit :) I expect part of the fun of this will be a new pairing coming along and hitting you with a goal you'd long forgotten about.

Criteria
What makes one goal better than another? That's entirely up to you. A scrappy last-minute winner in a qualifier could well be better than a 20-pass move in another friendly v Oman. So for now, nominate away, and if your choice gets knocked out in the first round, that's democracy for you.

Timeline
It'll be the end of next week at the earliest when I get this up and running. From the last 32 stage, two matches per day will take 16 days to complete. Add in any preliminary stage as well then and it'd mean a July-ful of memories! But it does of course need people to join in and make it a success.

Looking forward to this!

A quick update so

Thanks to everyone for the nominations that have come in! Just to clarify - yes, you can nominate multiple goals if you want.

I've gone through the "Ireland on YouTube" thread pulled a rake of goals off that. So all the classics are in, and actually a good chunk of the nominations were already included too. But nominate away anyway because there has been a couple I had overlooked, and there's also some links missing in the thread. I'll leave nominations open until Sunday.

It looks like 80 goals in the starting line-up. Once nominations close, I'll trim the fat to reduce it to size (I'll try include everything that got a nomination), and then 80 goals would mean we'd start on 1st July with 16 groups of 5 goals each. I'll do two groups a day, and leave votes open for 24 hours. So for example - Group A would start at 9am on Wednesday and run till 9am on Thursday; Group B would start at 6pm Wednesday and run till 6pm Thursday, and so on. (Give or take!)

You can vote for as many goals as you want, but there has to be an order of preference - I'll give 5 points for a first choice, 4 for second choice, etc.

Top two then get through to the last 32, which would start on 10th July I think. It'd be an open draw where group winners are paired against runners-up. Again, two per day, which would take us up to 20th July. Losers go home - so if it's Whelan (USSR) v Houghton (Italy), then you've a tough choice to make!

From there, it's a straight bracket through to the final - so winner 1 plays winner 2, and so on. Final would be around 30th July.

Feel free during the tournament to supply a better link to the goal if there is one - I've an awful lot of US commentary clips... :o

To give a taster of what's on the way - Liam Miller, Liam Brady, Robbie Brady, Robbie Keane. Roy Keane notable by his absence at the moment though!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by pineapple stu

To give a taster of what's on the way - Liam Miller, Liam Brady, Robbie Brady, Robbie Keane. Roy Keane notable by his absence at the moment though!

---

OK, so we now have three Roy Keane goals, so he'll be happy.

On the downside, I have 88 goals now, and I can't bring myself to cut more of them. Some are lightweights for this competition, but they'll spark a conversation.

So that's eight groups of six and eight groups of five, with the top two going through. I've pretty much everything done on my side to get it underway, so I think I can bring timelines forward if people are ok - I'll leave nominations open till tomorrow evening, and get underway on Friday morning with the first group of six.

Feel free to spread the word around too - social media, lapsed posters, other forums. If it goes well, there's similar tournaments which could be run (best player/kit/performance/goal conceded, etc) I think this one will be the most suited to the format though.

Thanks for doing this Mr. Stu! Great entertainment!