Golden Boots and silver linings

So it looks as if my €20 at 20/1 bet on Fred to be the World Cup’s top goal-scorer was not a sensible investment after all. Somehow, beforehand, he had seemed to match the profile of my identically priced 2006 hero, Miroslav Klose – an under-rated frontman in a team people were writing off even though they always reached the last stages and were playing at home.

Klose’s eventual triumph eight years ago was all the sweeter because he scored twice in the tournament opener. Nice as it is to win €400, you cannot put a price on the smugness that having a 20/1 docket on a Golden Boot contender who’s been slashed to favourite after the very first match allows.

Whereas, far from scoring twice in this tournament’s opener, I’m not sure Fred touched the ball that many times against Croatia. It looks as if his main role is to fall over occasionally and win outrageous penalties.

Oh well. It’s still not the worst gamble I’ve had on a World Cup. That prize will forever belong to the two air tickets I bought for myself and my future wife, 20 years ago, with a view to attending Ireland’s Round-of-16 match against Bulgaria in New Jersey. Yes, that’s right, reader – the game never happened. But it should have done.

Like many people, I had watched the first-round victory over Italy on television, and then immediately experienced non-buyer’s remorse at not being among the 50,000 Irish fans in Giants’ Stadium.

And yet there had been calculation there too. An eternal dilemma with football tournaments, unless you’re rich and have unlimited holidays, is whether to go for the group games, and risk having to come home when things are getting interesting, or wait for the knockout stages that may never happen.

I’ll always remember the trauma of being in Germany in 1988, when the terrible prospect of Ireland qualifying for the last four, and of us having to troop home before then while thousands of latecomers replaced us, arose.

It was almost a mercy when Holland intervened to prevent this appalling vista from becoming reality.

In any case, having missed the 1994 win over Italy, I made urgent plans for the knockout stages to which we were now surely headed.

And this is where a since-forgotten airline called Tower Air came in.

Tower Air was an Israeli company that, for the while it lasted, apply the no-frills model to long-distance travel. The fares were spectacularly cheap by transatlantic standards – £198 return in the summer of 1994. And although the available dates were few, it so happened that one of them was the 4th of July.

Having defeated Italy, Ireland seemed certain to win the group. In fact, even after the ambush by Mexico, we were still looking good. All we had to do was beat the limited Norwegians. That would have meant us playing Bulgaria on July 5th in New Jersey. But alas and alack, it was never to be.

The team settled for a no-risk draw against Norway, and second place. So instead of an evening kick-off in Jersey on the Monday, against moderate opposition, we were now condemned to another noon showdown in Florida, against the Dutch. Worst of all, the game would be on Sunday, while my wife and I were somewhere over the Atlantic.

Even apart from that, the journey was awful. They weren’t joking about the no-frills. The only thing Tower Air didn’t skimp on was Israeli-style security, which meant queuing for hours at the airport.

The misery continued on board with food that was grim even by the standards of the genre (in a 1997 survey, Tower Air rated 59th of 61 airlines for its services). And among the many luxuries not available was any hint of sympathy from the captain when he announced the result from Orlando.

I had drifted off to sleep still hoping we might live to play another round. Then I was woken by the pilot declaring that Holland had won “two-zero” – news he delivered desultorily and without comment, as if it was an update on our cruising speed.

The experience wasn’t all bad, of course. We still got to America cheaply. And that we got there at all may have been a result. Among the many corners Tower Air was cutting, apparently, was maintenance. In 1998, the company was fined for flying aircraft that needed repair work. It was dogged by a succession of other problems too before declaring bankruptcy in 2000.

@FrankmcnallyIT

fmcnally@irishtimes.com