Italia 90: Results were key for band playing sets stateside

Something Happens were on tour in the United States as Ireland played their group stage games and getting to see games presented quite a challenge for Tom Dunne and Co.

They managed to take in the England match in a New York Irish bar but were on stage in San Diego when Jack Charlton’s side took on the Dutch with qualification in the balance.

“We went on stage, there was nothing we could do,” recalls Dunne, “and then word came to us after about 10 minutes that the Dutch had scored.

“Nobody knew what was going to happen next; I suppose people thought that that would be that, Ireland would be beaten and that would be the end of us.

“But then later in the gig word came that we’d equalised and I shared the news . . . Wide- scale dancing broke out with many people jumping up on tables.

“There might have been three or four hundred people in that room and maybe a hundred would have been Irish but they dominated the whole thing with all the American people left wondering exactly what was going on. It was absolutely wonderful, the Niall Quinn goal just transformed the atmosphere in the room.”

Horror of realising

Then, though, there was the horror of realising that the second leg of their journey home was going to coincide with the Romania game.

“We landed in Heathrow whenever the game was on,” he recalls, “and we had to then get a flight from there to Dublin.

“Nobody knew what was happening but then, after a while, the pilot came on and said, ‘we’re cruising at 30,000 feet, we’re going to land in Dublin in 32 minutes, it’s still nil-all in the game’.

“He came back on 10 minutes later and said ‘we’ve started making our descent into Dublin and it’s gone into extra-time. It’s still nil-all’.

“The tension on the plane was palpable. So we landed into Dublin and getting our bags and our guitars took forever but then we got out into the arrivals area at the airport just as the penalty shootout was going on and we were all gathered around these small TVs and that’s where we saw Packie save the penalty and O’Leary score his.

“Then we got into our cars to drive home and the whole motorway into the city centre was just people dancing on cars and dancing on the street . . . it was just absolutely phenomenal.”

Pointless The band promptly discovered that they had a gig lined up for that Saturday, the night of the quarter-final against Italy, but they got to see the game after the promoters agreed it would be pointless for them to go on while it was still in progress.

“We were all quite optimistic that we would do well,” he says, “but then the goal was conceded and talk about the air going out of the balloon.

“So we went on stage and it was like going on stage at a funeral, there was such a sense of disappointment in the room.

“I remember at one stage some of the people got a little bit excited about something and the bouncers waded into the crowd like they were sorting out Combat 18, so we stopped the gig and we were giving out to the bouncers, saying ‘For God’s sake, everyone is broken-hearted, will you leave them alone,’ and the bouncers were just holding their arms up, going ‘sorry, sorry’ and backing away.

“I think they were just a bit fed up too and looking for an excuse for a bit of trouble.”