Days of Heaven

by Declan Lynch

  In my defence, I would say that I was not presenting myself to the world as a celibate Catholic priest, as he was.

  Ah, he wanted it all. He wanted it every way, but he could not have kept that schtick going for so long if he hadn’t been striking a few resonant chords with the people of Ireland — the major chords always followed by the minor chords; the little moments of apparent joy always followed by the shafts of remorse.

  I say ‘apparent’ joy, because in Cleary we can see something of what Evelyn Waugh meant when he described the Irish as a joyless people — this might seem like a strange observation on the face of it, given the way that we present ourselves to the world, yet while Waugh was no friend of the Irish, that doesn’t mean he was wrong. Cleary would tend to give that line of Waugh’s some credibility. There was no real joy in him — he was too much of a control freak for that.

  In fact, it was not until the arrival of Bono that we found ourselves a real singing priest, who could do joy, who could be standing on stage in Croke Park singing about pride in the name of love with nothing to be ashamed about and God on his side.

  We have always done sadness superbly, but Bono is the first Irish artist of renown who has made it his business to generate these sensations of joy and he has spoken of how hard it is to convey this thing called joy — it must be harder still, given the bit of Paddy in him.

  It is another of our little contradictions, this impression we give to the world that we are bursting with merriment when in fact we are wasting away with melancholia. Which makes our journey with Jack all the more meaningful — because it is arguable that Italia 90 and everything surrounding it was the most sustained period of joy in the entire history of the people of Ireland. And some day we might even manage to do it again, only sober this time.

  Now that the war is long over — and his side lost the decisive battle by a terrifyingly thin margin in the Divorce Referendum of 1995 — I suspect that we would feel most comfortable with the story of Father Michael Cleary rendered as a musical comedy. We would prefer the broad strokes, the holy man warming up the crowd at Knock for the Pope along with Bishop Eamon Casey and the hilarious twist, whereby he would later tell Casey about his son Ross, but he would have to find out about Casey’s son from the hated media.

  The Singing Priest! it would of course be called, a madcap romp through the playing fields of the GAA where he first got the thirst for glory, to the austere manly world of the seminary and on to stardom as the peoples’ priest who could sing a song and tell a joke about God, and who was loved by the ladies ... and the rest of it kinda writes itself, as they say.

  We would prefer to experience the life and times of Father Mick again as musical theatre, because human beings can’t take too much reality, and Paddy can probably take less of it than most.

  We were preparing to abandon it altogether in this glorious time called Italia 90.

  Jack Charlton was perhaps the one man in the world who had less belief that Ireland could win the World Cup than we had ourselves.

  In fact, like most of us, I doubt if the thought ever entered his head. But he had a belief that the Irish could play in the World Cup and not disgrace themselves and when Jack genuinely believed something, he would usually find a way to get it done.

  Even now, one can but marvel at how the Irish found Jack, and Jack found the Irish. He hadn’t even wanted the job, at least not much. He could take it or leave it, which gave him a certain lightness of being which he would not have had in the England job, one which he genuinely wanted. But he would have been a very bad manager of England because they have this crazy belief that they can win the World Cup and they expect the manager to deliver on what they regard as a perfectly reasonable expectation.

  Jack, no more than Ron Greenwood, or Don Revie, or Bobby Robson, or Graham Taylor, or Glen Hoddle, or Kevin Keegan, or Terry Venables, or Steve McLaren, or Sven, could not have fulfilled that expectation. And it would have been a very ugly scene.

  But somehow, he found himself managing the Irish, who had been conditioned to adopt an attitude which to him came naturally — above all else, the object of the exercise is to avoid disgracing yourself.

  They say that Jack was always like that, that he had a sense of when the job was done, which was not often shared by his more ambitious colleagues. Even at Leeds Utd, who were in the running for every major title in England and Europe for several years, Jack could be heard wondering aloud how the fuck they kept getting themselves into these situations. You would normally hear a player talking like that on the last day of the season as his team of perennial strugglers faced into another match which they needed to win to avoid relegation. But Jack would be cursing Leeds’ incorrigible habit of getting themselves into situations when they needed a result to win the League, or maybe even the Double. ‘How do we do it?’ he would say, shaking his head sadly.

  Which might feed into that Official Ireland cliché of the Gruff Yorkshireman, except it wasn’t quite as simple as that.

  Jack was regarded by his teammates, not least John Giles, as a top-class player. He also had qualities of honesty and decency, which would far out-weigh these curmudgeonly aspects. And he was a deceptively skilful player of the media game. He raised no objections to the conventional wisdom that he had taken over the football team of this small country, with players of limited ability, and that the Irish were punching above their weight. And this wasn’t just the conventional wisdom of the hounds of Wapping: it was put about so much, most of the Irish believed it, too.

  ——

  Drawn against England again in the first round of Italia 90, we now had one overriding need, which was the same overriding need we had had in Euro 88: above all else, the object of the exercise was to avoid disgracing ourselves. In a perverse way, the fact that we were drawn in the same group as England again would have suited Jack. It concentrated the mind on something other than winning the World Cup. That was for others, such as Italy, and Germany, and Argentina and ... ahem ... England.

  In fact, our thoughts were still so far away from such extravagant notions, it ensured a perfect meeting of minds between the manager and the multitudes. We were also up against Wor Dutch again, a wearying thought for both us and them, but Egypt, the fourth team in the Group, represented the road to freedom.

  In our own way we had an imperialist attitude to Egypt, knowing little about them but sort of assuming that we would always be better than them at football. Just by some process of natural selection. Since the four best third-placed teams would qualify from the six Groups, the deal went something like this: we would do everything humanly possible against England to avoid being disgraced; we would probably struggle against Holland but so would everyone else, so we didn’t mind that; and since Holland would beat Egypt, and England would probably beat Egypt too, it surely wouldn’t be beyond our capabilities to do slightly better than Egypt. And thus the job would be done. And Ireland would be free.

  Again, one can but wonder what Jack wanted from this World Cup, in which four of the six Groups would send three teams to the last 16, making the task of qualifying from the Group stage about as easy as it gets, if that’s all you want. And I really do believe that’s all Jack wanted, but in matching our limited ambitions, Jack also gave leadership. He may have been the one man in the world who had less belief that Ireland could win the World Cup than we had ourselves, but he strongly believed that we could get a result against England. Or even against Wor Dutch. And he was able to communicate that belief.

  He had worked it out.

  He kept talking about having gone to the last World Cup and taken notes, which told him that every country was playing the same way, with this slow-build-up and a lot of passing the ball back and forth across the field to no apparent purpose. He saw that there was a place for something a lot more, shall we say, uncomplicated. In fact, it was his great strength and his great weakness, that he could only see the game, and indeed the world, through his own eyes.

  And those
were the eyes of a big centre-half. A very good, big centre-half, but one who believed that if he received the ball on the edge of his own penalty area, there was a fair chance he might lose it, so as a player he would try to avoid that, and as a manager he would insist, on pain of death, that anyone playing for him would avoid it, too.

  It was not an attractive message, but there was something very attractive in the absolute clarity with which he expressed it. There was never a sliver of doubt in the minds of the players as to what was expected of them. And that if they failed to do it, they were gone. Even if they were Liam Brady, late of Juventus, they were gone.

  Though Jack would claim that he was not just an unthinking philistine who had something against creative players, per se — he would find a place for his own brother, Bobby, in any team that he managed, because Bobby was, after all, perhaps the greatest footballer who ever lived. Yes, he would always pick Bobby — BUT ONLY IF HE DID WHAT JACK WANTED HIM TO DO.

  Several of the Irish players could do a lot more than what Jack wanted them to do, but even they responded to this quality of leadership in him, helped by the fact that it seemed to be working and getting them to places they’d never been before in a green shirt.

  And the people responded too.

  Historically, Paddy was not unfamiliar with the tongue of the Englishman issuing crude instructions and expecting total obedience. But in this case, he seemed to be doing rather well out of it.

  And there was a certain feeling of liberation too, a sense that we had been freed from all that bullshit of ours about the great poets and the great patriots and the great saints. Now all we wanted was what any other normal people wanted — a result.

  We appreciated the fact that Jack seemed to insist on doing things properly, things we mightn’t do quite as properly ourselves with our fetish for improvisation, for busking it. Things that the FAI could never have done without expert help, like bringing the players to Malta before the World Cup, to acclimatise. Watching the players sunning themselves over there in Malta, we felt a strange sense of ownership, almost a sense that they were members of our own family who had done well for themselves, stretched out there beside the pool getting a tan.

  Could we afford this? Of course we could, we were in the World Cup now, and it was a long way from that poor sick scribe slumped across the typewriter in his darkened hotel room in Malta, a long way from his desolate words: ‘Last night in the Ta’ Qali ...’

  But we were on a mission as well as a holiday, because we would not just be facing England, we would be facing the England supporters, who still had a reputation as the worst hooligans on the face of the earth. We would be sent down there to Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia, we, the best supporters in the world, thrown in with this horde of nazi bastards. And then over to Sicily for the next two matches, more frigging hardship, more frigging boats, more planning to be done. And planning was never our strong suit.

  It was as if they were trying to load all these logistics onto Paddy so that he simply wouldn’t have the time or the energy to get drunk and to engage the enemy. We, the good guys, would be shipped off the mainland to provide opposition for these low-lifes. We would be put in cages, just like them. To protect us from them.

  The Dutch, we imagined, would be too stoned to be getting stuck in or involved in any coherent way, and the Egyptian fans probably wouldn’t bother coming at all.

  Again, our theory of Irish exceptionalism hadn’t quite worked out as we supposed it might. Could FIFA not have quietly arranged it so that we’d be drawn against Italy, in Rome, which would suit us in so many ways, culturally, historically and indeed alcoholically? And suit Italy too, because obviously they’d beat us?

  Ah, but perhaps we had been chosen for a higher task. Like the monks of the Blaskets, it would fall to us to keep the flame of civilisation alive down there on the island. We would wear our colours, not just to express our pride in our lads, but to distinguish ourselves from the English and to say, ‘We are not them’.

  It appealed to Paddy’s innate sense of martyrdom, this idea that we would stand for goodness, even for Christianity, against the heathens — a bit like the way that Archbishop McQuaid wanted the football men of Dublin to stand against the Communists — except this time we’d do it. Like we had done throughout the ages. And we would do it with great big smiles plastered all over our faces, because we would be drinking our heads off, just like the enemy, except we would not go mad, like them, and kill a load of innocent people. We would go mad in a good way.

  And there were some other matches going on as well.

  It was lovely feeling, to be sitting in the International on a bright Friday afternoon, drinking pints of Guinness and watching the opening match of the World Cup, knowing that we were actually involved in this thing. That these great events — even the opening ceremony — concerned us in some tangible way. That we no longer had our noses pressed up against the window, watching the feasting within.

  I had felt this same sense of belonging, as a child, on the day in 1970 that Athlone Town played their first match in the League of Ireland against Shamrock Rovers. It was almost too much to take in, this move to higher ground, where you would encounter beings you knew only by reputation, wondrous mythical creatures like Mick Leech and Frank O’Neill and all the other class acts who played for Rovers at that time. And there were feelings of danger too — these guys could destroy you in five seconds if you weren’t careful.

  Embarrassment would duly come in a big way. It would be seen all over the football world in TV pictures showing the Athlone keeper swinging from the crossbar and breaking it during the FAI Cup semi-final against Finn Harps — breaking it twice indeed, for the punchline. Oh, how they laughed.

  But I felt that sense of belonging again when the Town moved to even higher ground, on the day they played AC Milan in St Mel’s Park in the UEFA Cup in 1975, the match that famously ended in a scoreless draw with John Minnock, Athlone’s best player, missing a penalty.

  Over the years I have become a sort of unofficial historian of that seminal event, a story which I think draws its terrible power from the strange magnificence of that missed penalty — the trauma of it, the sheer mad profligacy of it, the absurd waste of such an opportunity to defeat these gods who had brought their own food and wine to this remote place at the end of the world, and who had watched in awe as a pipe band marched around the pitch before kick-off, led by a goat.

  And apart from the superstar, Gianni Rivera, and Albertosi, the Italy goalkeeper in the 1970 World Cup Final against Brazil, who saved Minnock’s penalty, and the hatchet-man, Romeo Benetti, one of the Milanese who witnessed this was a former player who had just joined their coaching staff, a chap called Giovanni Trapattoni.

  The missing of that penalty created a sort of magic which neither side could find the energy to disturb for the rest of that game, and for about an hour of the return match in the San Siro stadium. I now have no doubt, having reflected deeply on this, that if John Minnock had scored that penalty, Milan would have had their arrogance pricked enough to get mad and to get even, and possibly to beat us out the door.

  And it would all have been forgotten.

  Instead it was all coming back to me, in all its raging glory, as George Byrne and I and a full house of Friday-afternoon boozers watched Argentina playing Cameroon in the first match of Italia 90, knowing that on Monday night it would be our turn, against the old enemy, England.

  The opening match was held in Milan, in the San Siro where the Town had held out for 63 minutes until AC put them away with three goals.

  And there was madness in Cameroon, too.

  There is always madness in places like Cameroon when they get a big result and we read a little paragraph in the paper quietly informing us that 23 people were killed in various stampedes and shooting incidents as fans celebrated on the streets for a fortnight.

  We sort of envied them for their utter lack of inhibition and the fact that they had something to c
elebrate, regardless of the health and safety aspects. And now they were beating Argentina, the holders.

  They had been playing in defiance of all the stereotypes. They weren’t going to be kicked back home to Africa by the Argie strongmen, leaving Maradona to destroy what was left of them. It was they who were doing the kicking and getting two red cards for it. And they could play a bit, too. Cameroon won 1-0, which had to be a good thing for us.

  Anything which seemed to upset the natural order, boded well.

  The saps were rising.

  The BBC had picked ‘Nessun Dorma’ as its signature tune for Italia 90, a stroke of executive genius which would be almost unimaginable in the BBC of today.

  You would hear it said by its detractors that for decades, the BBC tended to be over-staffed with cravat-wearing characters who had one decent idea back in 1968 and then popped out for a drink, and hadn’t been seen in the office since. Mind you, that one idea would have been something like ... ‘What about sending old Attenborough up the jungle for a while, and seeing what happens?’ Or, ‘As regards Association Football, say, an hour of highlights on Saturday night when the working classes have relaxed themselves with a few ales?’ The idea of having Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun Dorma’ as the theme song for Italia 90 could only have come from that BBC tradition of leisurely enlightenment. Perhaps with a touch of alcoholic enlightenment on the side.

  In retrospect, we can see that it was perhaps the last hurrah of that tradition, before the Corporation became inhabited by smaller minds and smaller men. Today it would be argued that the song is too upmarket or that the young people couldn’t relate to it, or there’s nothing in it for women, or some such bollocks.