Which would have done more for the mood of our people on Tuesday: that impending €13 billion from Apple or three points from Greece? The latter, of course, if you have any kind of perspective – 40,000-ish bike sheds and the Apple loot will be but a distant memory, while a win against the Greeks would kick-start an entire footballing renaissance. So, no contest.
The evening, though, didn’t start particularly well due to the assumption that our under-21 game against Latvia would be on the RTÉ News channel. Fifteen minutes into a discussion about what we might spend that €13 billion pressie on, weirdly the FAI’s coffers not getting a mention, and you’d be like, “hello, when are we going to Tallaght?” And then, d’oh, over to RTÉ2, and there was our Sinclair Armstrong running about the place like a mad fellah celebrating a goal he had apparently just scored.
But as if we weren’t already enduring enough sorrows, Latvia only went and took a point off our young lads, Marie Crowe left to deal with a grim-faced Alan Cawley and Graham Gartland pitchside at full-time, both of them at a loss to understand what they had just witnessed. Seventy-one per cent possession, 29 shots, but 2-2. Football is beginning to become unpalatable for us Irelanders.
Over to the Aviva. Things could only get better. Or could they? The build-up had largely been filled with post-England gloom, Caoimhín Kelleher ruing the fact that he’s still an employee of Liverpool Football Club, and John O’Shea insisting that he’s not the gaffer, even though gaffer Heimir Hallgrímsson sort of suggested O’Shea was the gaffer until the Icelander figures out what gaffering Ireland is all about.
No little confusion, then, and spirits were hardly raised by Joanne Cantwell introducing us to a little montage thingie from the England game when we were shown Declan Rice and Jack Grealish scoring their goals. There really was no need for that. The montage, incidentally, included a vox pop with Jim Sheridan, of all people, popping up.
Joanne had Kevin Doyle and Stephen Kelly for company on the side of the Aviva pitch, Didi Hamann, Shay Given and Richie Sadlier possibly calling in sick as parrots after Saturday. And Des Curran and Ray Houghton replaced Darragh Maloney and Ronnie Whelan in the commentary box, Ronnie, whatever about Darragh, now in a home for the bewildered due to the lack of crunching tackles against the Englanders.
There were changes too in the Irish line-up, three in all, Andrew Omobamidele, Jason Knight and Alan Browne coming in for Séamus Coleman, Matt Doherty and Adam Idah. It was hard to figure out what formation the team would play, but it looked suspiciously like a 4-6-0. Kevin begged to differ. “It could be a 4-4-1-1, but it could easily be a 3-5-2,” he said. Stephen just shrugged. He had, a bit like ourselves, no clue.
“The mood is good,” Heimir said of his camp when he chatted with Tony O’Donoghue ahead of the game, without explaining why. “It will probably be a different kind of game,” he hoped, half-promising that we’d see more of the ball than we did on Saturday, trusting that the Greeks would come bearing gifts in the form of sitting back and allowing our boys to tippety-tappety about the place unperturbed.
Anthems. Divil a boo for the Greek tune, possibly because the bulk of the crowd had a whale of a time in Mykonos during the summer. Andy Warhol took his place on the Greek bench, Hallgrímsson and O’Shea scrapping over the gaffer’s seat on Ireland’s, and off we went.
To be honest, just two moments stood out in that half. First, the Greek “Kilmacow, Kilkenny” flag, which was both bewildering and stupendous, and second, Chiedozie Ogbene’s worldie of a goal that was ruled out because one of his toenails was offside.
Goalless at the break, then. Joanne attempted to inject some cheer into her panel. “We had 87 more passes in that half than we had in the whole of the game against England,” she said. “That wouldn’t be hard because we barely had the ball against England,” said Stephen, stubbornly refusing to be uplifted. Kevin, in fairness, was a bit more cheery. “Not brilliant, but it’s 0-0, we look solid, we look reasonably confident and the crowd are starting to sing songs.”
Five minutes in to the second half and Fotis Ioannidis put an end to the singing by inserting the ball in the Irish net, the peg he used giving him a fair chance of earning the lead role in any potential Jim Sheridan remake of My Left Foot.
Four-ish minutes to go, 2-0. If we had a Euro for every “Greek Tragedy” headline over reports on this encounter, we’d be close enough to Apple’s tax bill.
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