Ken Early: For better or worse, Ireland expects at Euro 2016

You'll have seen the ad by now, from the FAI's main sponsors, 3 – the one urging Ireland to #makehistory at Euro 2016. A man in a green shirt runs out of a suburban house celebrating Jon Walters' goal against Bosnia and Herzegovina. There are glimpses of Martin O'Neill, Robbie Keane, John O'Shea and Jack Charlton. An army of Ireland supporters, uniformed in 3-sponsored official national team kit, approaches the ports in a motley collection of characterful vehicles.

On the distant coast of France a green van bursts unaccountably out of the surf and drives up onto the beach. A little French boy cries out to his parents: “The Irish are coming!” He runs to the door and peeps outside, where the Irish army is shuffling past with its flags and banners.

The presumably unintentional resemblance of the crowd to a horde of zombies from the days when zombies were thought to be really slow rather than really fast might be what gives the scene its vague, sluggish menace.

Mass migration

The sponsors are presenting the behaviour of Ireland fans as a mass migration like those portrayed in the BBC wildlife series

Nature’s Great Events

, where some kind of tasty food species gathers into a teeming herd or shoal and moves towards a distant destination, all the while being feasted on by predators.

These sardines or salmon or wildebeest are always driven by some biological imperative – the need to feed, or spawn.

But what drives the mass Irish exodus to big-time international sporting events? What do we seek?

Boasting brains many times more complex than that of a sardine, we are surely driven by more complex motivations.

Perhaps we are lured by the promise of sporting glory, though since we follow a team that averages a goal and a half per European Championships, that hope could be described as forlorn.

Perhaps we travel in search of lost time, to relive the legendary exploits of previous generations of fans on tour in West Germany, Italy and the United States, to film ourselves re-enacting the nostalgic ritual and post congratulatory messages under each other’s videos on social media.

Or maybe it is a simple biological imperative after all. The thing most of us are truly seeking in France is a great watering hole in the sun. Being among the Irish crowd at an international tournament confirms that football is the best excuse for the true national sport of drinking.

That’s not to say that the football is just a cover for the real event. The quality of the drinking is linked to the performance of the team. At the last Euros, the Irish fans enjoyed a week-long frenzy that started the day before the Croatia game and continued until the night when the 4-0 defeat to Spain confirmed Ireland’s early elimination. The next day everyone simultaneously realised how hungover they were.

Flights were brought forward, tickets for the Italy match were dumped on the market at a loss. The fear had become an epidemic condition. Nobody wanted to be there any more.

Last time, of course, the FAI chose to base the team in the holiday resort of Sopot, which became the focal point of hedonism for every Irish fan in Poland. This is how John Delaney would end up surrounded by admiring, boisterous Ireland fans on his occasional excursions into the town square, no matter what time of the day or night it was. This time the team is based in Versailles, which is a bit more buttoned-up. The lights of Paris nearby will draw off much of the Irish crowd.

But the historic circumstances suggest France 2016 could be even bigger than Poland 2012. The next World Cup is in Russia, a land of endless train journeys and large, unsmiling policemen. The one after that is in the parched deserts of Qatar. The Euros in 2020 are happening everywhere and nowhere. France is the last chance for this drinking generation to mass on a foreign field and write a new page of glory in the history of their nation.

Invasion plan

From a tactical point of view, the overall invasion plan is essentially the same as it was in Poland:

veni, vidi, bibi

. Only this time we’re hoping that the team can stay alive into the knockout stages, to delay the inevitable moment when darkness and self-loathing descends.

Promisingly, the Irish team seems to be invigorated by a vibrant new team spirit. That too may be related to the decision of the management team to take a more rational approach to the drink question. Giovanni Trapattoni’s opinion was that the players shouldn’t drink. He himself didn’t drink much, and he didn’t see why anyone else should either. Early on, he set the troubadour Andy Reid’s head on a pike as a warning to the others. It was a warning that was ignored. Trapattoni’s policy of prohibition didn’t mean the players didn’t drink, it just meant they had to keep it on the quiet. And once you’ve started into an illicit session, well, you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

O'Neill's policy has been to let the players have a drink as long as they finish up by a reasonable hour. This is part of the reason why players are looking forward to joining up with Ireland again. The Premier League is overrun with sports scientists, performance nutritionists and exercise physiologists, so the clubs aren't as much craic as they used to be. Going away with Ireland has become an enjoyable break from the routine, as it was under Jack Charlton and Mick McCarthy,

Some people might regard this as a backward step. It’s better to see it as a case of having the serenity to accept the things you cannot change. You have to respect the constraints imposed by the local culture. A German politician who campaigned to impose speed limits on the autobahn wouldn’t get far, nor would a Viennese city councillor who ran on a platform of banning smoking in bars. So why should the manager of the Irish football team be expected to tell his players they can’t have a drink?

As regards Ireland’s chances of avoiding getting booted out of the tournament at the earliest possible moment, they’re better than they were last time. The opponents this time aren’t quite as strong, and finishing third in the group could be good enough to go through.

A chance

Are they good enough to do something really extraordinary? The most overused phrase in previews of the chances of Ireland – and most of the other countries involved – will be “If Leicester City can win the Premier League…” But trite as the comparison might be, and weak though the similarities are between Ireland’s team and Leicester’s, the substance of the point is true. Leicester have shown every team in world football that if they play at their best, they really do have a chance.

It all depends on which Ireland turns up on the day. Will it be like the one that lost to Scotland, or the one that beat Germany?

Shane Long on a good day can destroy the best defenders in the world. On a bad day he looks like a hurler who took up football too late. Against Germany in the qualifiers, James McCarthy dominated the midfield with an indomitable, tigerish spirit.

But there have also been games when he has had all the presence of a sheep grazing in the centre circle. The gap between Ireland’s best and Ireland’s worst is enormous and that’s what makes the anticipation of these games so exciting. You get the feeling that literally anything can happen.

The only certainty is that the Irish fans will be there in huge numbers, belting out their small but lusty repertoire of songs and agreeing wholeheartedly with each other that they are the best fans of any sport anywhere in the world.

And if you get a little bit irritated when you see one half of the crowd not singing because it is filming the other half, remember that it’s for the best that this celebration of our unique national charisma will be recorded for posterity on millions of shaky HD phone videos. Because most of us who will be there probably won’t be able to remember much about it at all.