Cyprus v Ireland, October 8th 2005 (0-1)

This is going to be really hard to write. I’ve been dreading it all weekend. I’m actually fed up writing depressing match reports. Why the hell can’t that shower of useless Tommy Tuckers give me the chance to write something positive? I used to enjoy writing these reports, like the one against the Czechs at Lansdowne when we were absolutely brilliant. I want to praise the team & write glowingly about how brilliant they are & how proud I am of them. For the last 12 or 18 months though, it has been getting harder & harder to watch them. Last Saturday was the straw that broke the camels back. It broke my heart to watch that pitiful performance. Thank God for Shay Given!

Thank God too, that the game was at the end of our weeklong trip to Cyprus and not at the beginning. My missus would’ve strangled me if I’d have let the depression brought on by watching my country try to play football, interfere with a
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Ireland v France, September 7th 2005 (0-1)

This was the game the whole country had been waiting for all summer long. Everyone knew how vital it was. In the estate I live, a good number of houses had tricolours hanging out the windows and even when I went to get my hair chopped on Tuesday, all the two girls in the barbers could talk about was football & how we were going to turn the French over.

Tickets were almost impossible to get and with 24hours to go until kick-off, ThePeoplesFlag hadn’t a solitary ticket between us and it looked a distinct possibility that none of us would be there to see the BoysInGreen grabbing the three points that would send us half way to Germany. Late on Tuesday night though our look began to change when Karl got a text from Ste in the SRFC ultras. Two of the four tickets we needed were offered to us & we are eternally grateful – thanks again Ste. The following morning Eamo got offered a seat on the North Terrace from Brendan and our
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As a balding old cockney used to tell us at lunchtime on a Saturday, many years ago, football is a funny old game. This game started like we were going to annihilate our Israeli visitors. Two quality goals inside the first twelve minutes and we were absolutely cruising. Then almost inexplicably, we did an AC Milan and threw it all away. Like the Italian outfit in the Mickey Mouse Cup Final a week or two previously, we had a couple of gilt edged chances to snatch victory after being pegged back to all-square but we couldn’t force the ball home. Unlike the Milanese however, this game was part of an extremely important competition and we could be left to rue these two dropped points for a long, long time.

Family circumstances dictated I couldn’t attend this one and Donogh’s emigration-enforced absence from all things football meant that TPF had only a 60% turnout at Lansdowne on Saturday evening. I’m reliably informed however that the three lads got on quite well without us and were ably assisted by Stephen, Richie & Ciara. We got a great write-up (and picture !!!!) in the new Ireland fanzine – The Boys in Green, and the lads were also photographed by the Star on Sunday. Not a pretty sight to wake up to on a hungover Sunday morning !!!! However Niall will be pocketing €50 for his posing, the proceeds of which will be spent when we meet up next Sunday to see the Wexford footballers beat his beloved Dubs !!!!

After the disappointment and utter frustration of what happened in Tel Aviv a few short months ago, we desperately needed a good start today. The result in Tel Aviv and the way it had come about had sickened me more than any football game in a long time. I was so infuriated that I didn’t write a match report. I feared that if I had put into print back then what I thought about our manager, his tactical awareness & his players then I might never be allowed in to Lansdowne again. Best to bite my tongue !!! Eamon, by now easily the most travelled among us, was of course in the Holy Land to witness that shambles. Despite the result he had a great time and did plenty of promotional work for the site !!! We all met up again for the friendly against China a few days later and despite scribbling down my notes on the half deserted North Terrace, laziness got the better of me and I never published a synopsis of the nights events. Apologies to all avid readers of my column !!!!!

I must admit that when I saw our teamsheet it didn’t exactly fill me with confidence. I know that Finnan, Carr & Maybury were out so that Ian Harte’s return was inevitable. However when I see his name on an Ireland team, I am automatically filled with fear and dread. Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a one-man crusade against the chap and I have willingly wrote positively about him when he has played well in a green shirt. However the bottom line is that he can’t defend & has absolutely no positional sense. The one thing he can do though (and in my opinion is one of the best in the world at executing) is taking free-kicks from 25 to 30 yards from goal. As soon as the ref blew for a free kick a few yards outside the Israeli box after only 5 minutes of play, I strongly fancied him to bury it. The only thing that surprised me was that it wasn’t right in the corner and he allowed the keeper get his hand to it. Despite this flailing Israeli hand, there was no stopping Hartey’s thunderbolt and we were one up. Despite the match being only a few minutes old this could actually have been our second as Robbie Keane was bundled over in the box a minute or two earlier and could easily have had a penalty.

There were only 11 minutes on the clock when our advantage was doubled. And what a goal. Andy Reid played Robbie in with a through ball straight from the Liam Brady Book of quality through balls. Exquisite. Robbie still had to finish it though and he made it look so easy with a delicate lob/flick over the advancing keeper. Marvellous goal. How the hell had we managed not to beat this mob over in Tel Aviv. We were so superior to them it was unreal. Robbie netted again before the half hour mark but he was correctly judged to have been marginally offside. Shortly after this Robbie had to depart the scene with a shoulder injury and was replaced by Kavanagh. And so began our demise. The duffer was pushed up front and Kilbane took his place on the left. For some reason our grip on the game had been loosened and the visitors came a lot more into it although they never really troubled our goal.

Five minutes before the break they were given a free out on the left following a Mattie Holland tackle. Never a foul but this Greek ref made some very strange decisions this afternoon and giving a free-kick for this was one of them. Good delivery and their number 3 got there just ahead of Kenny to plant an unstoppable header past Shay. Good goal but I’ll say it again – It was never a free !!!!
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This will always be remembered as the night that Robbie Keane broke Niall Quinn’s Irish goal scoring record by bagging his 22nd and 23rd goals for our country. This is a fantastic achievement at such a young age and because of his doing so, I won’t be too hard on him in my version of last nights events in Ballsbridge. Had it not been for his re-writing of the record books, I’d have been very tempted to have ago at him for not getting at least two more and for generally being downright lazy. But, we’ll excuse his prima donna performance due to the fact that his early brace secured the all-important three points. After the highs of Paris on Saturday we were brought swiftly back to earth by a lacklustre performance that almost put me to sleep. I suppose though, it must have been hard for the Boys in Green to raise themselves for a match against a few fisherman in a dilapidated old rugby ground after taking on some of the worlds best in one of the planets great sporting arenas only a couple of days beforehand.
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What a night. What a weekend. What a stadium. What an incredible travelling support. And above all, what a performance. This was way above what I had expected or could have dared hoped for. There’s not one Irish player that I can say anything overly negative about. Each and every one of them gave their all and they really looked like a team that is going places. This was the same stadium in which the French had lifted the World Cup only 6 years ago and here were the Boys in Green giving them a footballing lesson. All this night lacked was a goal and had that happened, thirty odd thousand members of Brian Kerr’s green and white army would have lifted the roof off this magnificent footballing arena and Paris would have witnessed one of the all-time great parties. As it was, we had to be content with a draw and believe me, we were but there was still a feeling there that maybe, just maybe, we could have won it.

Our weekend started on the Thursday when Karl, Shaun, Colm and I headed off from Leixlip on our road trip in our green, white & orange car. Our first destination was Rosslare (after a couple of photo s
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And finally the real football got underway again. After what was beginning to seem like a never-ending series of friendlies, the Boys in Green were back on the big stage and Lansdowne Road awoke from its slumber. Our visitors for the opening match in Group 4 somehow managed to bring the Mediterranean weather with them in an attempt to unsettle our boys. But as Dublin basked in one of our best days of the summer the lads produced a performance that, while not exactly scintillating, was hot enough to blow the Cypriots away and give us long-suffering fans real belief that we can qualify out of this group. Watching the French struggle at home to Israel later in the evening only reinforced this newfound optimism.

We’d been on the lash the night before
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Ireland v Bulgaria, August 18th 2004 (1-1)

Pictures from game will be posted shortly.

Thank God all these friendlies are finally over and we can get down to playing some proper football. It seems like forever since we made the journey to Basle last year to watch our last competitive game of football. It’s been one friendly after another since and most of them have been quite boring. This one was no exception. To be honest I didn’t expect much else. The season has only just kicked off & the pace this was played at had all the hallmarks of one of those pre-season friendlies that Sky hype up but are invariably as entertaining as watching an Olympic shooting final.
Everyone knows that the manager & players need these games to build for the World Cup qualifiers but I think the Irish footballing public are getting completely browned off with them. 31,000 is still a great crowd for a meaningless match but on such a lovely evening I thought there’d be at least another 5,000 on the gate. Even Donogh came up with some excuse (flu, I think) to give this one a miss. The rest of TPF were of course in attendance & the flag was positioned in its now customary position on the Nth. Terrace wall. Despite my apathy towards friendlies, I was looking forward to seeing the
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Ireland v Romania, March 27 2004 (1-0)
Click here for Photos

This is probably the hardest thing I will ever do (as regards match reports !!!!!!). How do you argue with the Messiah ???? And if you were in the crumbling old excuse for a stadium tonight you’ll know exactly what I mean. Every time he touched the ball or even failed in trying to do so, a chant of Keano, Keano reverberated around south Dublin. As much as I want to avoid the subject, tonight was all about the return of Roy Keane. My feelings on this excuse for an Irishman are well known, and as such, Eamo even asked me to put in a disclaimer before I write this match report. I wasn’t going to bother but after the game we all had a chat about exactly where we stand on the most controversial issue in Irish football since the beautiful game began. There are five of us involved in this website & it’s upkeep and I would like to think that we represent the broad spectrum of Irish supporters views. In truth we actually do. On a sliding scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the most anti-Keane (which is undoubtedly yours truly) to 5 being a typical ManUre supporter (Niall), this group of Ireland maniacs (as described recently by a prominent National newspaper !!!) are split down the middle.

Myself and no.2 (Karl) deliberately left the pub early in an attempt to give the glorious new PeoplesFlag it’s first airing in Lansdowne Road. We squeezed it onto the famous wall that runs along the North Terrace and judging by the amounts of text messages the no.4 (Mr. White) got during the game, it must have been in full view of a worldwide audience !!!

I don’t really know how to describe the actual game itself. Piss poor would be a typical Glaswegian expression of what it was like but I wouldn’t be so harsh !!!!! I’m looking through the notes I took during this “welcome back” farce but in all hon
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Ireland v Czech Republic, March 31 2004 (2-1)

Where do I start ???? Tonight at Lansdowne, myself and 42,000 other fortunates witnessed an absolutely enthralling & thoroughly entertaining game of football. An Irish performance full of grit, determination, speed & skill that finally eased any lingering doubts that I had about our ability to be a real force in International football. Those of you who know me & who read these little reports every now and again, will probably realise that I like nothing more than a good moan & whinge when things aren’t going well on the pitch. I suppose no football fan will ever be truly happy with his (or her) teams performance, but tonight I left Lansdowne after seeing that things were as good as I dared hope they could be.

The back four were tight and compact with Doherty playing particularly well in his first International as a centre half. Cunningham was his usual reliable self, Maybury did a lot of good things at right back and Ian Harte had the game of his life at left back. I’m not back-tracking (yet) over my previous comments on my new pal as I’m sure that this must have been some sort of aberration. However, were he to string two or three performances together of the quality of this one maybe my mind will be changed for me.
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Ireland v Brazil, February 18th 2004 (0-0)

I’d been looking forward to this one since the fixture was announced and like all things that you look forward too eagerly to, it was a big disappointment. I know it wasn’t the worst game I’ve ever seen at Lansdowne but it was a long way from being one of the better ones. Plenty have disagreed with me since and reckon that it was quite a good game but I’ve watched the tape twice since to see what I was missing & still haven’t seen anything to get overly excited about.

I guess I wasn’t the only one to be looking forward to it as half the country seemed to be interested in getting to this one. Cormac & Tomas even made the long trip from Slaneyside & the three of us hadn’t been to an Ireland game together since Wembley in ’91 when Quinner gave us one of the many draws in Jack Charlton’s overrated managerial career. If I remember rightly, we finished that campaign for Euro ’92 unbeaten and yet lost out on a place in Sweden because we didn’t actually get to beat any of the teams of significance in our group. And considering that we had to endure some of the worst football imaginable from the gruff Geordie & had to listen to Ole, Ole reverberate around rugby HQ every time we hoofed
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