Book Review

The Boys In Green, The FAI International Story, By Sean Ryan, Mainstream hardback, £15.99

When A fan rang us here recently with a query regarding some aspect of our national team's performances in years gone by, which nobody seemed able to answer, we suggested that he give the FAI a call. It was they, we were informed by the weary voice at the other end, who had told him to get in touch with us.

If the person recognises himself from the story and still hasn't got his hands on the required statistics he should, it turns out, take a journey through Sean Ryan's latest publication in the which the Sunday Independent's man takes a loving look at the history of our senior representative side.

Ryan's painstaking research has yielded a remarkably detailed account of the FAI's first excursions onto the international stage.

In a cleanly-structured narrative, he brings us through those first friendly games against Italy to the early attempts to qualify for the World Cup and, most recently, to the halfway point in our failed France '98 campaign.

Along the way, many of the game's great characters are remembered, although few are dealt with in any great detail as this is primarily an account of the senior team's games themselves and each one gets the personal attention of the author.

Early on, this approach gives an insight into the haphazard way in which teams were thrown together for hastily-arranged matches by an association which felt an intense rivalry with its northern counterpart and a considerable sense of inferiority to the English FA.

This is a particularly interesting section of the book for it deals with an era which has been poorly charted elsewhere to date.

Those who supported the teams through the succession of near misses in the 1970s and early 1980s, as well as the more successful Charlton era will, however, welcome the opportunity to relive the pain and pleasure of those times. They are unlikely to come across a work by a more devoted guide.