Explosive stuff for TV writers

Wednesday night was little fun, but it pales compared to February 15th, 1995, writes Mary Hannigan

If these are dark days for the Football Association of Ireland then they weren't much brighter back in February 1995. That was when members of the National Front and Combat 18 paid a visit to Lansdowne Road and proceeded to dismantle seats in a section of the Upper West Stand, throwing them on the Irish supporters below, at which point the friendly between the Republic of Ireland and England was abandoned.

Twelve years on and RTÉ's Scannalseries is revisiting that evening in a half-hour documentary, to be shown on Monday.

It might not quite have been "The night soccer died", as one headline put it the next day, but it was a shocking experience for those who found themselves in the middle of it all, among them the RTÉ cameraman Ben Eglington, son of the Irish football great Tommy.

Ben had the misfortune to be positioned in the Upper West Stand, right in front of the English support.

"Oh God, what idiot put them up there?" he said when he arrived in the ground, astounded that the visitors, whose reputation went before them, would be located in the upper deck of any stadium.

Eglington sensed there was trouble ahead, as did everyone else in the ground that night, when the national anthems were played.

A section of the Irish support booed God Save the Queen, while a chunk of the English supporters responded to Amhrán na bhFiannwith Nazi salutes and cries of "Sieg heil" and "No surrender to the IRA". A friendly it might have been, but the atmosphere was anything but.

Scannal quotes from a book written by the reformed English football hooligan Dougie Brimson, Everywhere We Go, which details the planning that went in to the trip by British National Party and Combat 18 elements.

"The whole point was to discredit the British government over the Anglo-Irish peace process," he said. "The security system they (the Irish) had set up was a joke. In the stadium the atmosphere was electric, full of violence, expectation and hate.

"And the Irish were in the same section as us so, as a consequence, they were getting punched and kicked at random - total mayhem."

"Watching this it actually makes me feel sick," said David Kelly, whose 22nd-minute goal for Ireland, followed by an "equaliser" by David Platt that was disallowed, triggered the riot in the Upper West Stand that resulted in the referee abandoning the game.

"I've never seen this footage before. It makes me sicker knowing what they accomplished, I suppose."

"In retrospect they obviously shouldn't have been put up there," said Seán Connolly, who was then chief executive of the FAI, also describing as "a big oversight" the decision to sell to Irish supporters tickets returned by the English Football Association, resulting in them being seated next to English fans.

The delay in the arrival of the Garda riot squad added to the chaos of the evening.

"If you wonder where the writers of Father Tedget their ideas from . . . There's a riot in Lansdowne Road, the gardaí ask FAI officials to let them in, only to be told: 'No, you're at the wrong gate'," said journalist Aidan Fitzmaurice.

"They had to climb over (the gate), pure Keystone Cops," recalled Connolly.

An inquiry was later held into the events at Lansdowne Road, but although the late Chief Justice Thomas Finlay criticised the FAI and the Garda, who had been informed by the English Football Intelligence Unit that known hooligans were "travelling to Ireland with the intention of causing disorder and violence", he laid sole responsibility for the mayhem on the rioters.

Also making an appearance in the documentary is James Eager, the young boy whose photo appeared in just about every publication at the time, as he stood on the pitch with his father watching the rioting.

Twelve years on?

"It was good craic at the time," he smiled, recalling his celebrity. Happily, then, he's got over it.

Scannal: More than a Game, Monday, RTÉ 1, 7.30pm.