World Cup 1994 qualifying Northern Ireland v Republic of Ireland: With the World Cup 2010 draw taking place tomorrow Keith Dugganreflects on a night of passion in an era long gone.
Windsor Park, November 1993.
For the Jack Charlton generation, it remains a piercing and electrifying date. Ireland travelled to Belfast needing at least a draw against Billy Bingham's Northern Ireland to stamp their passage to the World Cup in America. The Northern state - pioneers in the improbable business of Irish teams performing heroics against tanned and mighty conquistadors of the world game - were playing merely for pride and, most crucially, for place.
The Republic - Jack's Army - wanted merely to prolong what was a fabulous adventure through football and through a charismatic, many-accented team that gave the country something to shout about. It was inevitable that a long campaign should be reduced to this stark and emotionally schizophrenic meeting of the two Irelands, played out on the tight ground off the Ormeau Road. Ulster was going through a deeply nihilistic winter: innocents had been bombed in a fish shop, shot to death in a pub and the symbolism of the two football teams meeting in the heart of Unionist Belfast for bragging rights created one of those nights when football and politics became hopelessly entangled.
Billy Bingham, the man who masterminded Northern Ireland's thrilling journeys through the World Cup finals in Spain and Mexico, managed his country for the last time that evening and he promised: "Jack and his lads find themselves in the last city in Europe as far as they are concerned."
The Last City. Although coined by accident, it was surely the perfect epithet for the troubled and atmospheric old shipping town as it was that night, a football theatre which spotlit the impossibility of the prevailing mind-sets on both sides of the border. Windsor Park, her barriers festooned in the iconography of Loyalism, held little over 10,000 people but the Republic of Ireland could hardly have chosen a more hostile football ground in the world on which to try and secure qualification. The bones of that night have been well picked over now. It was a night of spitting venom and lusty tunes of Ulster and it forced the well-coddled people of the Republic to acknowledge that elsewhere on this small island was indeed troubled and different and home to people who were, at best, contemptuous to the lovable troubadours that were Jackie's Army.
The plight of Republic defender Alan Kernaghan summarised the contradictions of the night. Kernaghan had played for the Northern Ireland schoolboys and later declared for the Republic of Ireland, qualifying because his grandparents had been born in Belfast - before partition. Because of that, he was singled out for a special welcome from the crowd.
It was a heavy, tense game. Late in the second half, Jimmy Quinn struck a goal from out of the blue to send the home fans into a place of primal and vindictive joy for a few minutes. Four minutes later Alan McLoughlin levelled the match with a wonderfully clipped shot that was celebrated in manic fashion throughout the Republic but was greeted in Windsor Park by the most tremendous silence. It finished 1-1, a stalemate and a perfect metaphor for the conflict of that haunted city.
IT WAS A MOSTuniquely messed up Irish occasion and therefore, given the long history that had brought us to this point, it was aptly summarised when Jack Charlton, previewing the match, bluntly declared: "It will be a typical English affair." Of course, a generation of teenagers now mosey through the blooming streets of Belfast and in front of Dublin's preposterous window displays who were not even born when that match took place. Ireland versus Northern Ireland is a relic from another century. If it has any relevance at all, it is to ask whether or not the beautiful game, the English game, can ever grip the country the way it did that night. Can football ever matter as much here again?
It seems apt to think about that as we think of what will happen in Durban tomorrow afternoon. The fate of the Republic of Ireland team will be bouncing around in a plastic capsule along with the other contenders, with Fifa president Sepp Blatter smiling on benignly and several luminaries of the game at hand as the draw is made. Of the 53 countries affiliated for the European section of the draw, 13 will qualify for the South Africa World Cup in the summer of 2010. It has been a month of wintry truths for the state of the football in this part of the world, with the impoverishment of England's so-called 'golden generation' exposed by the formidable and smooth Croatian team at Wembley on Wednesday night. The exit of England, expected to be one of the prestige nations at this summer's European Championships, was the starkest reminder that the power-base of football is ever shifting. Euro 2008 will do just fine without queen and country. The so-called Celtic nations are also consigned to the role of spectators.
Wales plodded along, as ever. Northern Ireland were feisty and at least made it as far as Wednesday night with qualification still a remote possibility. Scotland were genuinely unlucky. As the Republic of Ireland, well: we were an afterthought. After the melodrama of Windsor Park, plans were being made for a triumphant and emotional invasion of the great Irish cities of America. Somehow, that excitement and fervour seems more distant than 14 years ago.
"I think we have to be patient," says McLoughlin, the hero of that last stand in Belfast. "We are not England. We are not Germany. In our last campaign, we finished third, which is where we were supposed to finish according to the rankings. Steve (Staunton) was a shock appointment and it didn't go that well for him. But there were some tough games and he had a young squad. Did he get a chance? I don't know. It seems to be forgotten that we had a few upsets under Jack as well. We had poor results. Don't forget we drew 0-0 with Lichentstein. And even that night in Belfast, we needed a Spanish goal to get us through. It could easily have been different."
McLoughlin remembers the tumult of that night in Belfast as though it happened yesterday. It did not define his career but it was such an epochal sporting moment, as iconic as Houghton's goal in Stuttgart or Packie Bonner's save in Genoa, that he could not escape it even if he wished to. Like the rest of the players, he had been pitched into a disorientating environment leading up to the match "It was very tense," he acknowledges.
"Obviously, this was the high point of the troubles and security was unprecedented. There was even security at the golf course. When we travelled to the ground, the lights were off on the bus and I will always remember turning into the ground for training and there were lads playing in the five-a-side cages and they ran up to the bus. The enormity of stepping into something quite alien made the thing unforgettable. My mum and dad had moved to England in the 1960s and I was quite detached from what was happening in the North. It was intimidating and it was strange and I suppose in a way, the safest place to be was on the pitch. So being in the dug out, being close enough to hear the crowd, you were acutely aware of the atmosphere that night, stuff I wasn't used to hearing."
McLoughlin was sent on to replace Ray Houghton with 20 minutes remaining. He had scarcely caught breath when Quinn scored for Northern Ireland. The impact that the Portsmouth player had on the match made it seem as though the substitution was one of those inscrutably brilliant calls that Charlton could instinctively make. In fact, Charlton was busy berating Tony Cascarino even as McLoughlin was moving towards a place in Irish sporting history.
'BIG CAS', UNFLAPPABLEto the last, had left his team jersey hanging on a peg in the dressing room. "His face was like thunder," Cascarino laughs now. " "I don't know what happened, I had never done anything like that before. Jack went mad. He was saying, "ya'll get us thrown out of the competition, ya daft buggah'. Poor Charlie O'Leary went racing down to the changing room. While all that was happening, Alan scored. And I was delighted for him and the team but I was relieved as well because it distracted Jack and he wasn't going to stick one on me."
McLoughlin had received the most explicit instructions from his Geordie manager. "He just said: 'Get in there, get us a fooken goal. Make a name for yerself, son'."
McLoughlin found it hard to command a regular first team place because of the depth of talent and experience in the squad. Looking back now, he is immensely proud that he made every single squad in his eight years of playing for Ireland. In Belfast, he was searching for that elusive first goal in the most unpromising of circumstances. Quinn's goal had reawakened the home fervour and in a claustrophobic match, it was hard to see the Republic getting many clear looks. When a headed clearance fell to McLoughlin, he didn't hesitate.
"I knew when I struck it. And the feeling was sensational." Of course, the crowd did not erupt. Fintan O'Toole, who stood as a southern Irishman in the crowd and wrote vividly about the experience in these pages, likened it to "watching the television with the sound turned down".
"The team showed character, because the North were desperate to get a result against us," remembers Cascarino.
Afterwards, the fans headed home with no trouble. Alan McLoughlin politely stopped to answer questions and was immediately asked about the political tensions in the city. "And it brought me down to earth. In football, we tend to be oblivious to everything that happens in the real world so it opened our eyes. It was important to acknowledge that what was happening a few miles down the road went deeper than football but I was there to play a game and was in the frame of mind of having won a match. And I was overjoyed because I had scored for my country. So it was a strange night."
Cascarino and McLoughlin both live in England now. Cascarino is well established as a canny and irreverent football analyst and speaks knowledgeably about the Irish scene. He accepts that there was something unique about that period of Irish football that may not be retrievable.
"Someone said to me that before the last international against Cyprus, just five of the guys stayed over in Dublin. The rest just hopped on jets. And I said, 'well, that is part of the bloody problem.' You have an ethos of individualism instead of a group. Jack had this low-key attitude that went against the grain. He kind of trusted us to put everything into the 90 minutes of the game You could tell Jack the night before the game that you were having a beer with your dinner. And he would shrug and say "Can if you want." You wouldn't but he treated us . . . like men, I suppose. Things weren't perfect. Like, our training shorts were often ridiculously small and you might get a tee shirt that wouldn't fit a 10-year old boy. And we all complained and laughed about it. That seemed to be half the fun of joining up. Guys would bluff injuries to get in the squad and be there for the week. Now, everything is perfect and the training gear fits but I am not so sure that players are as keen to get on the plane. The game has become very professional and players have agents and they are scared stiff to say anything and all the rest. And something has been lost."
As the big drum churns in Durban tomorrow afternoon, Ireland face into the World Cup without a manager and with a team who last left the pitch in Dublin to the sound of Irish fans booing. Jackie's Army heard booing back that night in Belfast, 1993 as well.
But it was different then.
