QuoteI believe Stephen McPhail also scored from a corner in one of those US Nike tournaments. Can't remember who against. Possibly South AfricaOriginally Posted by WexCar
Pleased for the guy, even if it was his ties to Quinn that got him in there.
His corners were outrageous all right !
I believe Stephen McPhail also scored from a corner in one of those US Nike tournaments. Can't remember who against. Possibly South Africa
Folding my way into the big money!!!
Doesn't Steve kind of look like Damian Lewis from Homeland? And Band of Brothers?
No Somos muchos pero estamos locos.
Stan in a more natural element?
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...type=1&theater
I agree the fella in the middle looks eerily similar to our Stan but the photo was actually taken at a rugby league game in New Zealand circa 1984 and depicts the famous Haka being performed. The football and caption were cleverly photoshopped in. Adept as they were, the pranksters neglected to remove the tree in the upper left background, which is unmistakably a Toatoa.
I'm going to side with my faith in you and give you the benefit of the doubt with a 'thanks' for that.
Doesn't the guy on the left slightly resemble Ray Houghton, probably about to perform a somersault or something?
This?
http://brandnewretro.ie/2011/06/18/w...fc-semi-final/
Stan's photo looked original enough, maybe Tets was after the unedited original Rugby league game photo?
A "match assessor" ?? What did he do? Go down to the local Friendly Match or Safety Match factory and carry out quality control?
Forget about the performance or entertainment. It's only the result that matters.
Presumably he would go through the fixture list and stay stuff like, "Ah that's a tough one, and so's that one...and that one...Christ were gonna get relegated!!"
In an interview on BT Sport's Life's a Pitch last night, Staunton peddled a deluded line in claiming that "we achieved our goals ... set by the board" whilst he was in charge, but that a change in management was made as the achievement of those goals "obviously didn't appease the right people at the time".
Perhaps my memory fails me, but finishing third in our qualification group (ten points adrift of Germany in second place) surely wasn't one of the goals set by the FAI at the time, was it?
!0 points adrift is better than 14 points adrift.
One target was improved, we moved from 4th seeds in Euro 2008 Qual draw to 3rd seeds for the WC 2010 draw.
However that could also be read as a slide from 2nd seeds in WC 2006 qual draw to 3rd seeds in WC 2010 draw
Is anyone really fooling themselves that we wouldn't have been at least 10 points adrift with Trapattoni in charge?
We would be playing for a maximum of 10 points against Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Wales and any more than 9 would be a near miracle.
Who knows? Why omit Cyprus, the clearest direct benchmark for improvement? In Trap's first campaign we got 6 points from Cyprus versus one point a year earlier under Stan.
I think we could have got 6 points from Wales under Trap if Stan / Givens got 4. We tended to get 6 points against teams of that stature under Trap. The problem was first and second seeds.
Stan's best result was Slovakia at home. We should / could have beaten them home and away under Trap. The home game was a turgid bore but we should have won both.
The results weren't always terrible under Stan, but the performances were. 5-2 loss to Cyprus and coming within seconds of drawing 1-1 with San Marino are probably the two worst performances by an Irish team since the 80s.
The Kazakhstan game was on a par with the San Marino game in a lot of aspects.
The performances in the Trap era were just as disgraceful. We had no right to win against Georgia at home. We won because of bad refereeing. Who knows what the result against Armenia at home would have been if their goalkeeper hadn't been incorrectly sent-off. Who knows how we would have got on against Georgia "away" if we didn't get to play them in Mainz. The draw away to Russia in Moscow was an embarrassment. Good result on paper but the performance was a disgrace and we only got anything out of that game because of Dunne and Given.
Then there is the 1-6 loss at home to Germany in which Keogh netted a late consolation. That is up there in terms of the 5-2 loss away to Cyprus in my opinion.
Countries bigger (Portugal) than us have the odd freak result against teams worse than Cyprus.
Trapattoni was very, very lucky in his reign. I haven't even mentioned the first minute sending off for Pazzini in Bari. That is all well and good if you are getting lucky against teams like Italy and Russia, quite charming in fact but when you are getting lucky against teams like Georgia and Armenia... then I despair.
It didn't take long for us to get figured out though and here we are..
I dunno. I think there was a lot of self loathing going on in many quarters when Trap was being "lucky". I think people willfully overlooked the stonewall Doyle penalty not given at home to Georgia and the Andrews goal wrongly disallowed in the same game. And so what if Italy had a guy sent off? We got a point we didn't even need to secure second. We played well enough. Ten man Italy in Italy would still be favourites to beat us on Italy.
Armenia had their keeper rightly sent off, despite what he self loathers tried to say. We got a waxy own goal, no argument there. But given what Armenia did to Slovakia and Denmark I think we can take some credit for never even looking like we were having any trouble.
I think when a team of our stature qualifies or gets close to it there will have to be an element of luck to it. You take it when it comes. Nothing to moan about.
Stan is starting to look a little puffy.
No Somos muchos pero estamos locos.
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