An Irishman's Diary

IN HIS HISTORY of the game in Ireland, Green is the Colour, this paper’s long-time soccer correspondent Peter Byrne mentions how, during their early rivalry, “the football fraternity liked to chastise their GAA friends that Michael Davitt [one of the association’s original patrons] had kicked off a Glasgow Celtic game in Parkhead in 1894”.

In fact, as Donegal and Mayo prepare to meet in the GAA’s annual showpiece this weekend, it might be timely to recall the landmark role both those counties played in the establishment of that famous Scottish soccer club.

It was a landmark in more ways than one, since it involved a sod of turf, brought over from Donegal and reinforced with shamrocks, which was then formally laid in the centre of Celtic Park by the aforementioned Mayo man, Davitt. Who, it was reported at the time perhaps with poetic licence – “fancied that the green sod conveyed from dear old Donegal would be so slippery that any Saxon rival running over it would fall a cropper”.

The plan didn’t quite work out like that. Instead, what happened is that somebody – no doubt a Saxon – promptly stole the sod, an outrage that provoked another poetic outpouring, in which an unnamed bard wished ill luck on the thief, viz: “The curse of Cromwell blast the hand that stole the sod that Michael cut. May all his praties turn to sand – the crawling, thieving scut.” Maybe the supposed magical powers of Donegal turf did work eventually. Or maybe it was the curse. At any rate, when Celtic Park was redeveloped a century later, in 1995, another small piece of Donegal (from the Rosses to be exact) was brought over and laid in the new pitch. And of course it may have been a coincidence. But Celtic’s greatest rivals, Rangers, have certainly fallen a cropper since.

SPEAKING OF SAXONS, and of green being the colour, there is an enduring myth in football circles that Germany’s curious choice of “away” strip – a hue found nowhere in the national flag – originated as a tribute to the Republic of Ireland for being the first country to play the Germans after the second World War.

Unfortunately, it’s not true. It was the Swiss who played them first. And as for the Germans’ picking green, the choice appears to have for more prosaic reasons, having nothing to do with Ireland.

It’s true that the Republic was, in 1951, one of the first countries to play the newly-truncated West Germany on their return to international competition, just as it had been one of the last to play the old Germany before the war.

Indeed, as Byrne points out in his book, the Irish must have been surprised to see that among those to survive the intervening cataclysm was a certain Jakob Streitle, a member of the 1939 team who was still holding his place, at full-back, 12 years later.

But however grateful the Germans may have been to their opposition, they would not have pleasant memories of the match. Ireland led 2-0 at one point, before the typically resilient visitors fought back to level. Then, after the home side regained the lead, late on, the veteran Streitle rose to head what everybody assumed was a last-minute equaliser.

Everybody except the referee – an Englishman named Fred Ling – who decided that the game’s last minute had in fact elapsed just before the ball collided with Streitle’s forehead. He later claimed, unconvincingly, that he had blown the whistle at that moment.

In any case, the Germans lost. Something they would do again, incidentally, at Dalymount Park in 1956. Then, despite having won the 1954 World Cup in the meantime, West Germany took a 3-0 thumping from an Irish team that included no fewer than seven players drawn from domestic clubs.

It is still arguably the best result in Irish soccer history. Maybe Giovanni Trapattoni should mention it in his team-talk before the Germans’ latest visit to Dublin, next month.

THAT GREEN is the colour is about the only thing the two Irish football associations agreed on after the 1921 split, which necessarily occupies a large part of Peter Byrne’s history. Many of the consequences of that rupture are still with us, including wrangles about player eligibility and the eternal question of whether an all-Ireland team would do better than either the North or South has done separately.

This and related issues can expected to feature at a panel discussion in Dublin on Monday night – part of the Ranelagh Arts Festival – in which Byrne will be joined by former Chelsea and Ireland player Paddy Mulligan and by RTÉ commentator Darragh Moloney, who

narrated a TV documentary based on the book earlier this year.

But there may be more to the discussion than that. The documentary, and indeed the book, ended last May, just as the Boys in Green were heading to Poland amid high hopes. So, given that the fourth member of the panel is Football Association of Ireland chief executive, John Delaney, it’s likely that one or two more recent controversies will feature as well.

A panel discussion on Green is the Colour takes place at the Ranelagh Multi-Denominational School, on Monday at 8pm. More details are at ranelagharts.org