2010 WORLD CUP PLAY-OFF/FRANCE v REPUBLIC OF IRELAND:AFTER A confusing opening clip of pygmy elephants in Borneo and Kathryn Thomas in a bikini, confirmation that we were indeed about to watch a football match came with Bill O'Herlihy announcing: "You're on the right channel!" Except, were we really?
On a remarkable night, even the Parisian hosts’ penchant for unpredictability was unpredictable. De Gaulle once despaired: “I cannot prevent the French being French.” But even by Gallic standards this was off-the-wall.
By the end of it all, John Giles still looked like Gilesy, but even the calm prescience he had shown all night was pressed to cope with what had happened.
The Sage of RTÉ’s football coverage is not one for fashion, perhaps a relic of those 1970s haircuts which proved nothing dates faster than the trendy. Which is why, with most of the country in doleful form beforehand, he was travelling in another direction.
“I don’t think this is impossible for Ireland to win. Their (France) capacity to play well is better than ours – but it has to be done,” Gilesy said with typical inscrutability.
“Ireland play worst when they have something to protect. When they have nothing to protect they just go for it. I know it sounds silly, but the mentality is so different.”
Giles also intimated he believed players
can often set the tone for how they play, far more than the current cult of the coach may allow, even when your coach is a legendary authoritative figure such as the Duce.
Giles was backed up to an extent by Graeme Souness, who pointed out that a 1-0 lead meant France could fall between two stools. What no one could have predicted was how the French would tumble between stools in a manner that would have had Brendan Behan tut-tutting.
Home hauteur was pounced upon by the Irish team in a way that made Anelka Co look like a bunch of louche dilettantes and Giles a man whose lottery number selections would be worth sneaking a peek at.
Even an inexpert eye could spot the omens long before Robbie Keane’s goal.
The expertise that went into forming it was staggering enough to make one wonder if the team that had bored for Ireland through much of the qualifying campaign had had a collective lobotomy.
“Awesome, perfection really,” purred Jim Beglin at the goal. “If the French did that, we’d be drooling over it.”
At half-time back in studio there was enough purring to suggest bowls of cream were simmering nicely under the desk. Eamon Dunphy could have put the boot into those of us who doubted, but chose instead to confine himself to “this nails the lie that this is a limited team. A limited team couldn’t get France into this state.”
How much the flaky French contributed to that state will have added considerable fuel to those who indulge in national caricatures,
but there was no getting away from the magnificence of the Irish display, even if it ultimately, and cruelly, proved futile.
“Heroic is the word to describe it,” George Hamilton opined and only a prince among begrudgers could have disagreed.
“We’d have taken this scenario beforehand,” added Beglin before extra-time. “But we should be in South Africa now.”
And the bitch of it is that he was right.
Ireland should have been, except for Thierry Henry’s digital dexterity that George Hamilton christened the “hand of St Denis”.
“That’s a disgrace, you have to say,” added George, before Beglin cemented a position as a voice of football reason.
“If it was at the other end and an Irishman did it, we’d acknowledge it, and take it,” he said. “I’m not justifying it. It’s a foul and it’s gone against Ireland, but anyone would have done it.”
George was having none of that, describing Henry as the “thief of St Denis . . . big countries get the decisions . . . the French cheated their way to South Africa.”
Not surprisingly, Giles described that as “over-the-top”, while Dunphy again called for video evidence to be used. He also wondered why Henry didn’t admit to handling the ball.
On any other night such dewy-eyed sentiment would have been laughable.
But this was no ordinary night.
