Three Lansdowne nightmares

Ireland 1, Switzerland 2 October 16th 2002 (ECQ): During one of Mick McCarthy's first games in charge, a home game with Iceland, the Irish manager got his tactics wrong and a section of the Lansdowne crowd, goaded by a tabloid hack the previous Sunday, booed Roy Keane's every touch.

If McCarthy thought then things couldn't get worse he would have been taken by surprise by this, his final game in charge, when not long after a glorious but controversial World Cup summer he discovered the true extent of the Irish intolerance for failure.

Hakin Yakin scored just before half-time for the Swiss with the Irish looking all at sea tactically. A sizeable portion of the home crowd booed their players from the pitch at half-time. With 12 minutes left an Ian Harte free-kick was turned in to his own net by left back Ludovic Magnin, under pressure from Gary Breen. It looked briefly as if with one bound our heroes were free. McCarthy promptly replaced Harte with Gary Doherty. That left a gap at the back and with two minutes remaining Fabio Celestini drove through and scored from the edge of the area.

Having lost to Russia weeks earlier it was Ireland's second successive competitive defeat and their first at home in a competitive game since Austria won at Lansdowne in 1995. The booing at the end and the chants for the exiled Roy Keane were the ugly epitaph to the Mick McCarthy era.

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: Given (Newcastle United); Kelly (Leeds United), Harte (Leeds Utd), Breen (West Ham United), Cunningham (Birmingham City); Healy (Celtic), Kinsella (Aston Villa), Holland (Ipswich Town), Kilbane (Sunderland); Keane (Tottenham Hotspur), Duff (Blackburn Rovers). Subs: Morrison (Birmingham City) for Kilbane (62 mins), Butler (Sunderland) for Duff (83 mins), Doherty (Tottenham Hotspur) for Harte (86 mins)

SWITZERLAND: Stiel; Haas, M Yakin, Muller, Magnin; Canabas, Vogel, Wicky; H Yakin; Frei, Chapuisat. Subs: Rurre for Frei (71 mins), Celestini and Cantaluppi for Wicky and H Yakin (85 mins).

Ireland 1, Austria 3 11 June, 1995 (ECQ)

A week after Ireland's ignominious draw with Liechtenstein, Jack Charlton brought his troops to Dublin looking for redemption. In the week between these two landmark disasters the Irish team spent their time recreating in Limerick. The stories of those seven days of epic drinking still make men shudder and they are capped by the manager's decision on the way up to Dublin the day before the game to stop the bus at the Harry Ramsden's franchise which he partially owned and encourage the players in Harry's Challenge, a competition involving eating a lot of greasy batter cake food. For the record Gary Kelly won.

The next day brought Ireland only their fourth defeat at home in Charlton's 90 matches in charge. The result meant Ireland took only one point from their two European Championship Qroup Six qualifying matches that month. Qualification, which looked like a formality beforehand, was now unlikely. Austria's win put them two points behind Ireland with a game in hand. They would beat Ireland by the same scoreline in the return game in Vienna months later.

"This was not us in any way, shape or form. We didn't have the running power we usually have," said Charlton afterwards.

IRELAND; A Kelly (Sheffield United); G Kelly (Leeds United), P McGrath (Aston Villa), P Babb (Liverpool), D Irwin (Manchester United); R Houghton (Crystal Palace), J Sheridan (Sheffield Wednesday), R Whelan (Southend United), S Staunton (Aston Villa); T Coyne (Motherwell), N Quinn (Manchester City). Subs: J Kenna (Blackburn) for Staunton (45 mins), T Cascarino (Marseilles) for Quinn (57 mins).

AUSTRIA: M Konsel; A Pfeffer, P Schottel, C Furstaller, J Kogler; C Prosenik, D Kuhbauer, H Pfeifenberger, S Masarek; D Ramusch, A Polster. Subs: A Ogris for Ramusch (71 mins), A Hutter for Pfeifenberger (83 mins).

Ireland 1, England 0 15th February 1994 (Friendly) (abandoned after 27 mins)

A riot just waiting to happen. In the end it would be forgotten that for 22 minutes of the game itself the Irish side played surprisingly fluently. David Kelly's sweetly worked goal was as good as the team had scored in the previous five years. This was a rebirth. With style.

Before the 7pm kick-off, the Irish and English teams lined up for their respective national anthems. This was the first time that God Save The Queen had been played at a football international in Dublin for 31 years. The Irish anthem was given an English accompaniment of "No Surrender to the IRA".

In most areas of the ground there was sporadic booing, but in the upper deck of the West Stand it was greeted with Nazi salutes (see below left) by hundreds of English supporters.

And then at around 7.22 on a cold Wednesday night the age of innocence was done with. The first pieces of ripped-out seating came hurtling down from the stand at Lansdowne.

The 2000 or so visiting English supporters, who had been permitted to fan out around the saloon bars in the city centre all day, were reunited, ludicrously on the upper deck.

Tales of random acts of violence around the Dublin city centre had spread through the afternoon yet there were only 51 gardaí on duty in Lansdowne that night to cater for a capacity crowd which brought the whiff of menace from one corner.

Bernard O'Byrne, the FAI head of security, appeared on a television news programme to say that his people weren't expecting any trouble. If there was any, he added, the FAI was well equipped to deal with it.

The rest is history.