Beating England is the sweetest success, even when helped by an Englishman to do so The Irish obsess about beating England at anything, though English sports people almost never think about Ireland except when they have to play them
WHEN SLIGO Rovers met Bohemians in the 1970 FAI Cup final at Dalymount Park, among the guests was William "Dixie" Dean, the fabled Everton player and most prolific forward in the history of English football.
Dean, a son of Birkenhead and one of the toughest customers ever to lace a boot, had scored 60 goals during the 1927/28 season with Everton but had melted back into ordinary life by the time he made his guest appearance here. Dean clearly thought a lot of Sligo Rovers to accept an invitation to watch the club whose form he had illuminated for one season almost 40 years earlier.
Imagine the excitement of Justice Flattery, chairman of Sligo Rovers, and company when they received a telegram from Nottingham in 1938 confirming that Dean, who was expected to retire from football, had decided to join the Irish club.
By then, Dean's career was in decline, but he took the League of Ireland by storm in 1939, scoring five goals against Waterford in one memorable turn. (One of his specialities was to lob goals by
heading the ball with such force that it bounced over the goalkeeper's head.) Rovers finished runners-up in the league and the cup final.
Dean had doubled the gate returns too so that Rovers boasted credit of £560. Then he vanished back to England.
It is hard to conjure up just how fabulous an impression Dean would have made as he travelled around Irish football grounds even as war clouds gathered over Europe.
This was before mass television and Dean was largely a mythical figure, the stuff of newspaper and radio reports. To see one of the most gilded English players in the history of football association was a rare treat.
And it was a rare departure from the emerging trend of the 20th century, where many Irish teenagers signed up for apprenticeships and dreams of stardom in English clubs.
There is a reason why those who left an indelible stamp on their clubs, such as Jackie Carey of Manchester United, Liam Whelan of the Busby Babes, John Giles of Leeds, Liam Brady of Arsenal, Paul McGrath of Aston Villa and Roy Keane of Manchester United are associated with them decades after they have finished playing.
It was through such players that countless Irish sports fans came to know England. It was through a random decision to follow Stoke, Chelsea or Arsenal, and through the Saturday evening sports results detailing the fortunes of football clubs from such exotic places as Wrexham, or Huddersfield, or Preston North End, that the geography of England began to form itself in many Irish minds.
The perpetual rivalry between Ireland and England is one-sided in the sense that the Irish obsess about beating England at anything though English sports people almost never think about Ireland except when they have to play them.
The startling victory of Ireland's cricket team against England in Bangalore at the World Cup was the most recent example of this. The sudden outpouring of national pride and unfettered joy after a grim few months characterised by economic capitulation and the arrival of the men from the International Monetary Fund seemed all the more gleeful because cricket can be perceived as the very essence of England.
In a poll in the Guardian newspaper, 60 per cent of
respondents agreed that the defeat
to Ireland represented England's
most humiliating sporting loss.
But in general, the reaction across
the water was magnanimous.
As ever, the English seemed to enjoy the Irish delight, though in Ireland the joy was enhanced by English discomfiture.
That is hardly anything new. Perhaps the most celebrated sporting encounter between the two countries took place in a natural amphitheatre in Co Kildare. On December 13th, 1815, Dan Donnelly from Townsend Street, Dublin, took on George Cooper, the English champion boxer, in a ferocious bout in the Curragh.
Donnelly's feat is marked by an obelisk at the hollow now honoured with his name and, although he died
at 32, his right arm went on to have a macabre afterlife. Preserved in lead paint, it was touring New York as recently as 2006.
Donnelly's superiority - his last
fight was a 34-round marathon against England's Tom Oliver in Sussex - meant he had acquired mythological status by the time he retired.
Recalling his life on these pages in 1891, a writer identified as Laputan noted: "It was popularly believed that George IV knighted Dan, hence he was dubbed Sir Daniel."
Quoting from an 1832 edition of the Dublin Penny Journal, he recalled Donnelly's spectacular homecoming from that famous fight on the Curragh. "We remember well his triumphal entry into Dublin after his great battle on the Curragh. That indeed was an ovation. He was borne on the shoulders of the people, his mother, like a Roman mother, leading the van in procession and with all the pride of a second Agrippina,
she frequently struck her breast exclaiming, 'There's the bosom that nurtured him'."
Donnelly's demise was as swift as his ascent. He squandered the generous sums his boxing ability earned him and was reportedly one of the best customers at each of the four taverns he owned.
"In a footnote," Laputan writes, "it is explained that 'Poor Dan kept a public house, Lord Rest his Soul'. What potheen is cannot be understood by those who taste it not."
But the national reaction to Donnelly's success set a tone that still rings true. Winning against England mattered. Such achievements were few and far between and, like that cricket victory in March, they always came out of the blue.
In 1949, the Republic of Ireland football team took on an England selection containing Tom Finney and Wilf Mannion at Goodison Park in Liverpool. The general surprise at the 2-0 win for the visitors can be gauged in the introductory paragraph of Our Special Correspondent: "It was one of the most amazing and thrilling internationals ever witnessed. How Ireland failed to concede a goal will always be a mystery."
Almost 40 years would pass before the Irish would enjoy another significant day against the cream of England's footballers. By then, Ireland was in thrall to a quintessential Englishman.
It is hard to overstate the influence Jack Charlton had on Irish sport. For decades, Ireland had a reputation for producing talented players who enjoyed distinguished careers in England. But the international team's form seemed to fluctuate between unlucky and hopeless. Qualifying for a major tournament seemed like a mathematical equation no Irish team could crack.
In came Charlton, a shock choice for the job of Ireland manager when team morale was non-existent in early 1986. Here was an Ashington coal pit lad turned World Cup medallist with the immortal English bunch of 1966. He was gruff, struggled with Irish pronunciation, forgot the names of his players, rubbed critics up the wrong way and enjoyed fishing and a pint. Ireland fell in love with him.
In 1988, thanks to a lot of good fortune, Ireland qualified for the European championships in Germany. The opening game was against England. Ray Houghton's goal was not the most polished of his career (its fame was eclipsed by his strike against Italy in the World Cup of 1994) but June 12th, 1988, was one of those sporting days when time seemed to stand still.
When Houghton scored after just four minutes, it seemed like a mirage. As the Irish celebrated, Charlton stood with his hand on his head, looking dazed. People wondered if he was experiencing a pang of guilt at seeing his team score against his country. It turned out that he had hit his head against the top of the manager's dugout in the excitement. That was the beginning of a rollicking six-year adventure when Charlton confirmed his status as a folk hero in Ireland.
The low point came on a cold night in 1995 when rioting English fans caused the abandonment of a friendly match at Lansdowne Road.
Since then, the sporting rivalry has transferred itself to the rugby field. For some, nothing that happens in Irish-English rugby lore will surpass the immortal line delivered by John Pullin, the Bristol man who led an English team to Dublin for the 1973 Five Nations after Wales and Scotland had decided not to travel the previous year because of the political situation.
England lost, leading Pullin to remark in his captain's speech at the knees-up in the Shelbourne Hotel that night: "We mightn't always win but at least we turn up."
It remains one of the great one-liners of the sporting world.
It took several more decades before Irish rugby began to beat English teams regularly. The 2007 Six Nations match when Ireland hosted England at Croke Park was a peculiar, mixed-up day during which the 1920 Bloody Sunday atrocity at the stadium was written into the narrative of the rugby match and the arrival of an English team at Croke Park. "Foreign" games, such as rugby, had been banned from the stadium because of the incident.
The invitation extended to Queen Elizabeth II and her party to visit Croke Park will be a significant occasion and, as the GAA statement notes, it "reflects and acknowledges the special place of the GAA in the life and history of the nation".
For decades, the idea of any royal figure in Croke Park would have been unthinkable. But in time the Queen's visit will serve to highlight the importance of sport to both nations.
When the great Dixie Dean took his place in Dalymount Park all those years ago, he was sporting royalty in the eyes of those who were there.
The respect in which he was held is best revealed in a postscript to his Irish season.
The one cloud over his year with Sligo Rovers was that his runner-up medal somehow vanished from the team lodgings after the 1939 cup final. Whether it had been stolen or mislaid was never clarified and Dean left without it. Seven years later, a small parcel arrived at the Dublin Packet pub, which Dean ran in Chester. It contained nothing but his medal.
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