Brazil bring out united front

Emmet Malone talks to some of those involved in the game against the World champions in 1973

These days it may take about half a million euro or a very good relationship with the boys at Nike to get Brazil to pay a visit but in 1972, it seems, the patience to hang around Joao Havelange's office with an appetite for a spot of politicking could be enough to land the World Champions on your doorstep.

In June that year Louis Kilcoyne proved the point. In town with a team from the Republic of Ireland for a trip involving four matches he had organised, the Irishman camped out for half a day in the office of the Brazilian with the aim of getting a meeting. By close of business he'd got it.

Kilcoyne knew the Brazilians, who would go to the World Cup finals in West Germany in 1974 as champions, were coming to Europe in the summer of 1973 to test themselves in a series of friendlies. He proposed a match for charity and his offer reportedly included the FAI vote in the election for FIFA when Stanley Rous departed. It doesn't seem to have taken long for the pair to strike a deal.

The squad Brazilian coach Mario Zagala brought to Dublin for the game 13 months later was, for the time, as impressive as the one named by Carlos Alberto Parreira for next Wednesday's game.

Pele had retired in the wake of the team's 4-1 triumph over Italy in Mexico City and there were a couple of injuries but the likes of Rivelino, Jairzinho and Wilson Piazza, and a couple of the team's emerging stars, Paulo Cesar and Marco Antonio, were amongst the eventual starting line up.

Kilcoyne had promised they would face a team drawn from the whole of the island and had delegated the task of assembling it to his brother-in-law, John Giles, who enlisted the help of Northern Ireland skipper Derek Dougan.

Though the match was at the start of July and a number of the players had to train through their holidays to maintain match fitness (Giles had followed a tough season at Leeds with a couple of weeks in Courtown, where he ran on the beach each day to stay in shape) neither man experienced difficulty coming up with his share of the required numbers.

"I was in a good position to get people at the time because I was chairman of the PFA," recalls Dougan, "but the reality is that everybody wanted to be involved because of the opposition.

"I'd worked for ITV through the whole of the 1970 World Cup finals and this was definitely the best side I'd ever seen. I mean people talk about Hungary with Puskas but the reality is that they weren't even in the same league. So of course the players were interested to take part and for the supporters it was this great Brazilian side against a team drawn from the whole of Ireland, which hadn't happened in maybe 20 years. So it was a spectacle, like Frank Sinatra, Elvis or Barbara Streisand coming to town. It was something you desperately wanted to see."

For the Brazilians, the game marked the end of a nine-match European tour on which, up until then, they had won five, drawn once and lost twice.

Victory in Dublin would bring a $500 win bonus (they got nothing for a draw or defeat, while the Irish were on a match fee of "around £100") but a simmering feud with the travelling press over allegations that the players had "lived in cabarets" during the preceding weeks also provided motivation.

Whatever the mood amongst the visitors, Bryan Hamilton admits to having been a little awed by them. "It was like taking on the Harlem Globetrotters," he says. "Just a fantastic thing to be involved with as a player and at the end I was thrilled to come away from the game with Rivelino's shirt."

Mick Martin, then recently signed by Manchester United, shared the enthusiasm of the Northerners even if the political dimension of the occasion meant little to him. "I was a young boy, probably the youngest in the team and, to be honest, while I knew it was going to be a mixed team I don't think the significance of that was excessively important to me really," he says.

An attempt to stage a reunion for the Irish team last year didn't quite come off but a few will probably be back in Lansdowne Road next Wednesday and Martin, who will be in Dublin for the wedding on Monday of his daughter Siobhán, is hoping to get to the match.

"It would be great to see it because the original game was one of the highlights of my career. It was a huge occasion, we were playing the World Champions, although from a young boy's perspective the fact that it was an Ireland team was mainly important because you were in it. I mean it was seen as a strong selection and so it was sort of flattering to be asked to be a part of it."

The IFA reacted coolly to the idea, with the association's president, Harry Cavan, making a attempts to prevent it being played. Ultimately, he did succeed in having its international nature toned down and it ended up being billed as a game between the World Champions and a Shamrock Rovers XI. The association had little choice in letting other players involve themselves in the game but Dougan claims its disapproval of his role in helping to organise things cost him what remained of his international career.

"After it, I probably had a couple of my best years at Wolves but I never played for Northern Ireland again. I finished up with 43 appearances, seven short of my second gold watch. After 15 years I had no complaints but," he laughs, "you lot down south owe me a watch."

The politics of the IFA, he adds, always meant the organisation would fiercely oppose any attempt to build on an occasion. Others, including the team's manager, Liam Tuohy, feel opposition would have come from officials at both associations who feared the implications of a merger.

"Well, you've got two chairmen, and one of them is going to lose his job for a start, so it always would have been difficult but I don't think there's any doubt that the players would have been in favour of it."

Tuohy, like his players, takes some pride from the performance at Lansdowne Road, where the team may have lost in front of 34,000 supporters but emerged from the 4-3 defeat with credit.

He remembers, he says, little enough about July 3rd, the day of the game itself, only that the squad, which stayed at the Montrose Hotel, had "a bit of a loosener", up at UCD early on. Inside the ground some care was taken to avoid further antagonising the IFA and so only the Brazilian flag was flown and its anthem played. Strangely, though, the crowd were still treated to A Nation Once Again by the St Patrick's Brass and Reed Band towards the end of the pre-match build-up.

"The game itself was great," recalls Tuohy. "They played their usual dazzling brand of football. There was more to them than that. They had great balance in the side and all worked very hard - but we played very well against them."

After an hour the score was 4-1 with Paulo Cesar, Martin, Jairzinho, Paulo Cesar again and finally Valdomiro scoring the goals. There was the potential for things to become embarrassing but the flow of the game shifted considerably during the closing half an hour with Dougan and Terry Conroy getting two goals back, the Irish going close another couple of times and Pat Jennings saving a last-minute penalty that would have given Paulo Cesar his hat-trick.

Afterwards, both sides headed to the Gresham Hotel for a crowded reception. By then the Brazilians had earned their $500, the Irish their place in the history books.

How They Lined Out

Shamrock Rovers XI: Pat Jennings (Tottenham), Tommy Craig (Newcastle Utd), Paddy Mulligan (Crystal Palace), Alan Hunter (Ipswich), Tommy Carroll (Birmingham City), John Giles (Leeds Utd), Mick Martin (Manchester Utd), Martin O'Neill (Nottingham Forest), Terry Conroy (Stoke City), Derek Dougan (Wolves), Don Givens (QPR). Subs: Liam O'Kane (Nottingham Forest) and Bryan Hamilton (Ipswich) for Carroll and Givens (66 mins); Miah Dennehy (Nottingham Forest) for Conroy (88 mins).

Brazil: Leao, Ze Maria, Luiz Pereira, Piazza, Marco Antonio, Paulo Cesar, Clodoaldo, Rivelino, Valdomiro, Jairzinho, Dirceu.