The Duke of Windsor Park

Remember the last good time, the moment when we last stepped over the threshold into the limelight, the dizziness and uplift of it all? The world has changed since then.

This weekend we talk about going to hostile places, political hot spots, difficult trips on the road to the World Cup. Well try Windsor Park, Belfast. It will be eight years next Saturday, eight years since that extraordinary night in the little cauldron of a ground. Eight years since Alan McLoughlin dropped it off his chest and stabbed the ball left-footed into the roof of the next. Eight years since he silenced a ground and ignited a nation.

"Are we talking about Belfast?" says Alan McLoughlin when you call him.

"Yes".

"What else," he says and laughs. It was the worst of times, then the best of times. The North was almost paralysed by fear and loathing when the Irish team arrived to take up residence in Chimney Corner. The debris from the Shankill Road bombing was still in the air when loyalists performed the "trick or treat" murders in Greysteel.

Remarkably FIFA, despite meeting with both associations in Zurich, opted not to move the fixture as the tensions reached a level which even by the standards of the time and the place were remarkable.

Alan McLoughlin remembers comparatively little of the detail which swamped the run-in. The team were cloistered in the Nuremore Hotel in Monaghan for the week before the match and it was a deliberate policy of the management to let the hype of the match rather than the situation surrounding it to swamp the players.

"We were encouraged to think about the football in the run-in to be honest, but there were things that were different which brought it home to us. I remember the night before the game we went to Windsor Park for a light training session. The ground was supposed to be closed for a private session but some kids got in and I remember them coming down the steps towards the wire at the edge of the pitch pretending to be machine-gunning us. They were 16, 17 years of age. It made me think about where we were."

Where they were was at the crossroads of a remarkable set of circumstances which contributed to the emotion of the occasion. The Republic had casually humiliated the North at Lansdowne Road earlier in the qualifying series. Billy Bingham, the popular Northern Ireland manager, had taken exception to Jack Charlton's remarks to the effect that he wouldn't be losing any sleep over playing the North home or away. The cheery arrogance of the Lansdowne Road crowd opining that there was only one team in Ireland had rubbed more salt into the wounds.

So November 17th 1993 would be Billy Bingham's last game in charge after 14 golden years. He labelled some of the Republic's players mercenaries. He turned to the crowd for help. They obliged.

"And then there was the night of the game," remembers McLoughlin. "We travelled to Windsor Park on the bus with the lights turned off. There were a couple of armed guards on board. It had already been brought home to us where we were but that really raised the tension, driving on the bus, all of us in the dark with these people outside, all that hatred. I've never experienced anything like it."

To be sure of qualification the team needed a win. The first signs of creakiness on the Charlton bandwagon had come a short time earlier when Spain had come to Lansdowne Road and demolished a poor Irish team who had come away with only the consolation of a late John Sheridan goal which would eventually prove useful. At the same time as the two Irelands were to kick off in Belfast, Denmark and Spain were to do battle. If Charlton's team lost, a draw would be sufficient for both sides in Seville. Things were tense enough without the backdrop which Belfast provided.

Some players were subjected to special abuse: Alan Kernaghan, who had been born in Belfast and was eligible to play for the other side; anyone who had ever had any connection with Celtic; Paul McGrath and Terry Phelan for the colour of their skin.

"During the match itself, it was incredible, the hatred that was coming down off the terraces about the place. I was sitting on the bench beside my best mate Alan Kelly and we were getting each other through it with jokes.

"Jack would shout at us every now and then to go and warm up and we'd say: 'No thanks Jack'. I'd say to Alan: 'You go and I'll go,' but every time we stuck our heads outside the dugout it was horrible. We didn't want to walk down behind the goals. We'd do some hamstring stretches in the dugout and hope Jack wouldn't notice.

"Eventually we had to get out and we headed to the end of the ground where the terrace was being replaced. It was empty except for some police and their dogs. I just remember us warming up there and you could hear the abuse from either side of the ground and the dogs were going mental."

The game? A bad first half. Charlton's team playing poorly. Word from Seville was that things were scoreless too. Perhaps a bad scoreless draw would be enough.

Early in the second half the maths went awry. Jack Charlton sent Tony Cascarino to the touchline to tell the players that Spain were 1-0 up. A draw would suffice if things stayed that way. They didn't. Jimmy Quinn struck a wonderful goal for Northern Ireland. Windsor Park took a break from abuse and indulged in several minutes of pure celebration. Billy Bingham was alleged to have shouted something in the direction of Jack Charlton. It was lost on the wind but Charlton took offence anyway. Everything was headed for a bitter ending.

The moment doesn't need recounting of course. Twelve minutes from the end, Alan McLoughlin is just beyond the edge of the box, the ball comes off his chest and drops going away from him onto his left foot. His volley goes low and direct into the bottom right corner.

There followed maybe 15 minutes of surreal theatre. Charlton's team holding on. Windsor Park howling. News from Seville coming through like war briefings. Spain with just 10 men. Denmark pressing. On and on and on it went. Final whistle in Belfast. Hugs. Races to television monitors. More minutes of play in Spain and eventually redemption.

For McLoughlin it was the high point of a career, a golden moment that turned the months around it to gold also. A long career would bring no better day.

"I remember standing in the hallway in Windsor Park and I had to borrow a phone from a journalist, and ringing home and telling Abby what had happened. She was sort of cut off from it. I had to explain what it all meant. I think three weeks later the thrill of it had begun to wear off for her." The team came home immediately on a short hop flight to be mobbed in Dublin airport. Charlton and McLoughlin gave a press conference.

"That's about the last thing I remember. Jack made some crack like: 'About time he did something for me.' And then a journalist asked me a question about the killings in the pub. Trying to stir something. I told him to get sense, it wasn't the time or the place, but the players understood what had happened. Then I had a few drinks with Alan Kelly. I got back and played for Portsmouth on Saturday with hardly any sleep. Jim Smith took me off and gave me a roasting, but there were great times afterwards, my confidence was sky high."

He scored a hat-trick against Blackburn in the FA Cup, then Portsmouth went to Old Trafford in the same competition and secured a 2-2 draw and brought United back to Fratton Park. There was talk for months that McLoughlin was bound for Celtic. The World Cup loomed. He rode the crest of a wave.

Dreams are never quite perfect of course. Late in the season McLoughlin's knee betrayed him. He had a cartilage operation on the quiet. Portsmouth kept a lid on things lest it damage his World Cup chances. He went training in the heat of Florida and was in pain for the first few days but played through it. Still, the man who got the team to that World Cup never got to play in it.

"Yeah, for a long time I've thought it would be great to have got a minute or two even on the pitch, but Belfast that night was special. I've showed it to my little daughters a couple of times and they can't understand why their dad looks so happy, but someday they will. I wouldn't change any of it. When I go to Dublin for a match people stop me everywhere, they say I gave them the greatest night of their lives, the best summer of their lives, things like that. You couldn't change that, ever."

It's late in his career now. Wigan, who he's been with for a couple of troubled years (15 games played, four, no five managers through the door) have paid off the remainder of his contract. He lives near Swindon still and is training with the club, playing a bit with the reserves and hoping for a new club. And then hopefully a career in management for the man who lifted us over the wall last time out.

"Whatever I do in football though, that night will follow me around. Good or bad since, I can't regret a minute of it and the older you get, the better it seems."

Three losing play-offs adventures have befallen us since. Time for the new Alan McLoughlin to step forward.