Has Ireland ever been robbed?

[Donal81]

Interesting thread. In 1977, it was Giles' goal that was disallowed, right? There was an article in the Tribune a couple of years back in which a journo - Paul Howard, I think - went and interviewed the referee who disallowed it. They went over the video of the game and every reason the ref gave for disallowing the goal was clearly proved wrong by the video. The conclusion was that yer man was a bit of a nutter.

Belgium in 81 is just painful to watch, shocking refereeing.

Didn't Spain have two goals disallowed against us in 2002? Or was it two occasions on which Morientes was through on goal? I can remember thinking that if I'd been Spanish, I'd be raging. They got some offside decisions against them that were complete rubbish, the game should never have gotten to penalties.

Given against Holland in 2001: I thought that was a classic schoolboy goalkeeper foul - take out the man while making it look like you're going for the ball. In that Irish victories DVD, Given says it should have been a free out. And then bursts out laughing. Not a clearcut decision but I wouldn't have complained about a penalty, he definitely obstructed him. Whether or not it was deliberate was up to the ref.

We've definitely been shafted enough times but we've gotten away with murder too

[gspain]

I'm not old enough to remember this btw. we were also shafted in 1965 and then shafted ourselves.

Syria withdrew so we faced Spain in a playoff for a place in the 1966 World Cup. We beat them 1-0 in Dublin and needed a draw for a place in the finals.
We led 1-0 in Seville and Andy McEvoy clipped a lovely freekick over the wall and into the net to give us a 2-0 lead and surely qualification but the referee disallowed it. Spain equalised shortly afterwards and eventually won 4-1.

Then the real shenagins. No aggregate scores in those days and no goal difference so a playoff was needed between us to decide who went to England. Highbury had been the proposed venue and with the world cup in england that seemed logical albeit in our favour. The Spanish were unhappy at the thought or thousands of ex pat Paddys roaring on the boys in green particularly after experiencing the Dalymount Roar and Iribar dropping one into his own net so they offered to let the F.A.I. keep all the gate money if they'd agree to play in Paris in front of 30,000 ex pat Spaniards who lived there and 13 travelling Irish fans. we lost 1-0 to a goal 11 minutes from time.

No dodgey ref in 1957 but still we were robbed. We'd beaten Denmark home and away and needed a win over England to guarantee at least a playoff and possible automatic qualification for Sweden. Led 1-0 and murdered them at Dalymount and were set for a famous win when Tom Finney escaped down the right and crossed for a big bumbling westcountryman called John Atyeo to score. The silence could be heard in Cork and gown men cried their eyes out. Long before I was born but have heard the tales and in Stuttgart in 1988 I thought of that game a few times in the closing minutes aprticularly when another big bumbling centeforward Mark Hately rose to head a last gasp cross but this time Packie got a hand to it. Quite a few in green still cried their eyes out though.

We were 15 minutes away from Italia 34 too leading 2-1 in Holland before collapsing to lose 5-2. A draw would have dione. We would have been strong favourites too having won 2-0 on previous visit in 1932.

[Kingdom]

Well Gary some tales there!!!

Anything else? This beats working I tell ye that !!

[pete]

Holland offside goal preventing Ireland reaching euro semi finals in 1988 would have to be most high profile of my lifetime.

[brine3]

A goalkeeper is allowed to stand his ground. If Van Nistelrooy wants to try to run through Given then it's his own fault. The Dutch are convinced that the referee didn't give it because he was a German. (They seem to have quickly forgotten Overmars' dive leading to Gary Kelly getting sent off.)

Anyway, the next day the Dutch referee Jol took petty revenge on the German nation when he refereed the England - Greece game. He gave England about 8 free kicks in the last three minutes, and we all know that Beckham eventually put one of them away. This meant that Germany finished behind England in the group.

I'd say the time we were most robbed was when Macedonia purposely let the Yugoslavians win 4-1 with some very odd defending and interesting own goals.

[lopez]

Didn't Spain have two goals disallowed against us in 2002? Or was it two occasions on which Morientes was through on goal? I can remember thinking that if I'd been Spanish, I'd be raging. They got some offside decisions against them that were complete rubbish, the game should never have gotten to penalties.

Despite hundreds of cases of shirt pulling, it was the only one in numerous World Cups that it was given as a penalty. That porn-a-like who refereed the game was probably just settling the score for his penalty against us when we played Turkey in 1999.

...we were also shafted in 1965 and then shafted ourselves.

Nothing like being shafted by ourselves. Ahh but Gary, things have changed since then with regards to the FAI.

[brine3]

Indeed, robbed by the FAI in 1965. Imagine us at the World Cup in 66. We'd have had home crowds of freshly immigrated Irish at every match. And it was one of the greatest Irish teams in history too, if you ask me.

[Risteard]

What happened in 65?

[Karlos]

[QUOTE=brine3]A goalkeeper is allowed to stand his ground. If Van Nistelrooy wants to try to run through Given then it's his own fault. The Dutch are convinced that the referee didn't give it because he was a German. (They seem to have quickly forgotten Overmars' dive leading to Gary Kelly getting sent off.)

QUOTE]

I think we were lucky that Kelly even made it to the second half - his tackles on Overmars were shockingly late and was given the run around for the complete 45 minutes by him - absolutely no excuses should be made for Kelly on that day!

[pineapple stu]

Despite hundreds of cases of shirt pulling, it was the only one in numerous World Cups that it was given as a penalty.

Assume you're referring to Hierro's foul on Quinn? South Korea won a similar one against Italy, though the offence was penalised ludicrously few times.

To settle the Euro 88 thing, the group with us beating the USSR 2-0 and all other results being the same would have been...
NED 3-2-0-1-4-2-4
IRL 3-2-0-1-3-1-4
USSR 3-2-0-1-4-3-4
ENG 3-0-0-3-2-7-0

So if we'd have held on for 2-0, we'd have gone through. Otherwise, as Sheridan pointed out, we'd have lost out on goals scored. I think USSR beat Holland 1-0 in the opening game?

[Donal81]

Despite hundreds of cases of shirt pulling, it was the only one in numerous World Cups that it was given as a penalty. That porn-a-like who refereed the game was probably just settling the score for his penalty against us when we played Turkey in 1999.

That may be true but it stands that if we had gone through on penalties, the Spanish could easily claim to have been robbed by brutal linesmanship.

[brine3]

What happened in 65?

Ireland had to play Spain in a one-off qualifying match and the winner would go through to the World Cup. We had beaten them 1-0 in Dublin and lost 4-0 in Madrid. Back in those days English clubs refused to release Irish internationals for International matches that were far away (and the bigger clubs considered Dublin too far away), hence why we lost to them in Madrid by so much but won in Dublin.

Anyway, we were due to play Spain in this one-off play off game to settle who would go to the World Cup. The match was to be played on neutral ground. Recognising that English clubs didn't like releasing Irish players for away matches, FIFA decided that the match would be played in London, so that the strongest Irish team could be fielded, including the likes of Shay Brennan, Tony Dunne, Charlie Hurley etc. Obviously the Irish players were delighted with the choice of venue. The Spanish FA however wasn't too excited about facing an Irish team even stronger than the one that had beat them 1-0 in a stadium that would be filled with Irish Londoners.

The Spanish FA proposed a financial settlement (bribe) with the FAI blazers to have the match moved to Paris. The FAI accepted the money and agreed to the venue change and an Irish B team with none of our England based stars went to Paris and narrowly lost in front of an all-Spanish crowd.

That's the story of how the FAI denied possibly the greatest Irish side in all time taking part in the World Cup in England.

[Stuttgart88]

I think USSR beat Holland 1-0 in the opening game?

That's right.

I had always used the assumption we beat Russia 1-0 when saying a win would still have left us in third place.


Back to the Spain game: I thought that Spain's offside calls were actually correct. Close, but right. Breen & Staunton played a very dangerous game that day.

We actually got a really bad offside call in the recent game in Basle. Eirebhoy posted the tv pics. We'd have scored from the one where Robbie was through with Morrison beside him.

[lopez]

The Spanish FA proposed a financial settlement (bribe) with the FAI blazers to have the match moved to Paris. The FAI accepted the money and agreed to the venue change and an Irish B team with none of our England based stars went to Paris and narrowly lost in front of an all-Spanish crowd.

Doesn't Eamon Dummy - not my favourite person - have a great story of FAI officials mistaking a brothel for a church at one in the morning around the Moulin Rouge, the poor dears?

[pineapple stu]

Was the match not initially arranged for London as the World Cup was in England?

Minor point though, the rest is true.

[Stuttgart88]

I heard that story too.

Imagine we'd qualified. We might have beaten the Brits in the group stages saving the world from endless years of bragging.

[Donal81]

I heard rumblings of this before. I must say I know next to nothing about that team except that Charlie Hurley was a legend with Sunderland (I think) and Shay Brennan was the first Anglo-Irish to declare for us. What were the names of those traitors in the FAI in the 60s? Anyone called Delaney?

[nlgbbbblth]

My recollection is that a win over Russia would NOT have got us through. We'd have gone out on GD because we only beat England 1-0. We'd still have gone through if England beat Russia (by 2 goals?). My mate, a staunch republican, said that even under those circumstances he wouldn't want an England win!

that attitude of your mate really ****es me off
so he would prefer to see England do badly then Ireland to qualify for the next phase. That's not being a "staunch republican" - more like he has a case of negative nationalism.

[tricky_colour]

Well I don't know about being robbed, but Ireland have done a bit of
"robbing" themselves.

It was rugby not football though.

I don't recall all the facts (perhaps someone with a better memory can enlighten us?), but it was I think at Lansdown road and the referee was
an Aussie I think.

I dont know who we were playing, all I can remember was a try being scored
by Ireland and the referee calling for a video judgement (either concerning
downward pressure or perhaps a foot in touch) anyway it was not a try
(to my eyes, or those of the ref, according to his reaction) however the
try was given!

BBC rugby pundit Jeremy Guscott described the decision
as "disgusting".

I though it was a great decision

[M@ttitude]

Foot.ie.... Rugger Out!