personal preference art : The adventure begins
Still, there’s always that moment, usually just after the plane’s wheels have left the ground, when you can’t help but do a final mental checklist.
Passport? Yep. Credit card, accreditation letter, travel guide, sun lotion/umbrella, mismatched items of clothing to ensure you arrive at the gala opening ceremony looking like a deckchair? All present and correct.
The unique, essential, definitive, all-you-need-to-know World Cup 2006 guide with handy pull-out wall chart? Yes, I have all 74 of them, and not even two can seem to agree on England’s formation. (But then, sez you, neither can Sven).
Non-football reading material? Into Africa, a new account of Stanley’s search for Livingstone which, with its hair-raising tales of malaria, sleeping sickness, starvation, cannibalism, forced marches, torrential rain, blistering heat, massed attacks by soldier ants and lads having their arms chewed off by lions, is just the sort of stuff designed to comfort the befuddled travelling hack who has missed the last train from Hanover to Berlin and is faced with spending a night kipping on a bench in the Hauptbahnhof. (On the other hand, the good Doctor Livingstone never had to sit through a Sepp Blatter press conference).
So, with everything apparently accounted for, you relax into your airplane seat and then — boom! — a small detonation goes off in the back of your head.
Too late, you remember what you’ve forgotten. You frantically start searching through your hand luggage whilst simultaneously giving yourself a thorough security-style patting down, but it’s all to no avail. The terrible truth dawns — you’ve left your country behind! Ireland, Ireland, the Republic of Ireland. The land of your birth. The nation of O’Connell, Collins and Cascarino. You’re going to the World Cup and the boys in green won’t be there. Thirty-two countries have made the grade and we couldn’t even manage to insert 26 counties (plus County England). Oh woe, oh grief etc.
Ah well, I suppose World Cup 2006 will just have to muddle through without us. Somehow, they managed to do it in the last three great World Cup tournaments, in 1970, 1982 and 1986, turning to the likes of Pele, Zico and Maradona for consolation. And, of course, in the ’80s our friends in the north were also around to bring a little bit of green romance to the party.
But, on this, the opening day of the 2006 World Cup finals, it’s strange to think back to September 2004 and Ireland’s first game of the qualifying campaign at Lansdowne Road: 3-0 against Cyprus, Andy Reid scoring a cracker, the sun beaming, Brian Kerr beaming, and the road to Germany opening up and looking full of promise.
But come June 2006, and the only Irish people departing Dublin airport for the World Cup the other day were a handful of press and TV regulars, along with the boys from Apres Match, heading to Munich to shoot a few sketches which you will get to enjoy at home over the coming weeks. (As I discovered, Gary Cooke is also the ideal travelling companion: over the course of the two-hour flight; it means that I also got to sit beside Eamon Dunphy, Brian Kerr, Graeme Souness and Alex Ferguson).
In the normal course of events, the substantial Irish media gang heading for the World Cup would only be the advance troops for the full deployment of the massive Green Army. But this time, we’re no more than a tiny band of strictly neutral observers — we might as well be wearing blue helmets to distinguish us from the rest.
Still, there’s nothing to stop the Gaels from transferring their allegiance to another nation for this World Cup — and I don’t just mean whoever happens to be playing England. The presence of a big Polish population in Ireland should certainly lend itself to passion by association but my own personal preference would be for the Ivory Coast.
By Liam Mackey
Passport? Yep. Credit card, accreditation letter, travel guide, sun lotion/umbrella, mismatched items of clothing to ensure you arrive at the gala opening ceremony looking like a deckchair? All present and correct.
The unique, essential, definitive, all-you-need-to-know World Cup 2006 guide with handy pull-out wall chart? Yes, I have all 74 of them, and not even two can seem to agree on England’s formation. (But then, sez you, neither can Sven).
Non-football reading material? Into Africa, a new account of Stanley’s search for Livingstone which, with its hair-raising tales of malaria, sleeping sickness, starvation, cannibalism, forced marches, torrential rain, blistering heat, massed attacks by soldier ants and lads having their arms chewed off by lions, is just the sort of stuff designed to comfort the befuddled travelling hack who has missed the last train from Hanover to Berlin and is faced with spending a night kipping on a bench in the Hauptbahnhof. (On the other hand, the good Doctor Livingstone never had to sit through a Sepp Blatter press conference).
So, with everything apparently accounted for, you relax into your airplane seat and then — boom! — a small detonation goes off in the back of your head.
Too late, you remember what you’ve forgotten. You frantically start searching through your hand luggage whilst simultaneously giving yourself a thorough security-style patting down, but it’s all to no avail. The terrible truth dawns — you’ve left your country behind! Ireland, Ireland, the Republic of Ireland. The land of your birth. The nation of O’Connell, Collins and Cascarino. You’re going to the World Cup and the boys in green won’t be there. Thirty-two countries have made the grade and we couldn’t even manage to insert 26 counties (plus County England). Oh woe, oh grief etc.
Ah well, I suppose World Cup 2006 will just have to muddle through without us. Somehow, they managed to do it in the last three great World Cup tournaments, in 1970, 1982 and 1986, turning to the likes of Pele, Zico and Maradona for consolation. And, of course, in the ’80s our friends in the north were also around to bring a little bit of green romance to the party.
But, on this, the opening day of the 2006 World Cup finals, it’s strange to think back to September 2004 and Ireland’s first game of the qualifying campaign at Lansdowne Road: 3-0 against Cyprus, Andy Reid scoring a cracker, the sun beaming, Brian Kerr beaming, and the road to Germany opening up and looking full of promise.
But come June 2006, and the only Irish people departing Dublin airport for the World Cup the other day were a handful of press and TV regulars, along with the boys from Apres Match, heading to Munich to shoot a few sketches which you will get to enjoy at home over the coming weeks. (As I discovered, Gary Cooke is also the ideal travelling companion: over the course of the two-hour flight; it means that I also got to sit beside Eamon Dunphy, Brian Kerr, Graeme Souness and Alex Ferguson).
In the normal course of events, the substantial Irish media gang heading for the World Cup would only be the advance troops for the full deployment of the massive Green Army. But this time, we’re no more than a tiny band of strictly neutral observers — we might as well be wearing blue helmets to distinguish us from the rest.
Still, there’s nothing to stop the Gaels from transferring their allegiance to another nation for this World Cup — and I don’t just mean whoever happens to be playing England. The presence of a big Polish population in Ireland should certainly lend itself to passion by association but my own personal preference would be for the Ivory Coast.
By Liam Mackey
posted by awesome at 11:30 PM
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