Days of Heaven

by Declan Lynch

  So, as he sat in the Stadio Olimpico, watching Ireland going down 1-0, Dunphy was having none of this all-of-Ireland-in-it-together shit. If you want family entertainment, you should check out Des O’Connor, baby! Dunphy lashed out a piece for the front page of the Sunday Independent which revisited his familiar themes — the betrayal of the finer traditions of Irish football by this caveman attitude, the misuse by Jack of the talent at his disposal which, in better hands, might have taken us all the way.

  Out on the running track, various other significant figures in Irish life were making their contribution to the night, adding touches of surrealism which could only come from Paddy operating at full throttle. For a start there was the surrealism of this unrestrained celebration, after what had been a fairly comfortable win for Italy. For Jack, waving his tricolour, there was perhaps a touch of relief to be going home. For everyone, indeed, there was maybe this feeling of relief that it was all over now, and this was the worst that had happened to us, a defeat by the narrowest margin by the host nation.

  Charlie Haughey was out there joining in the celebrations, and so was Chris de Burgh.

  Perhaps predictably, people asked what the fuck Chris de Burgh was doing out there, but in fact, Chris de Burgh probably had more of a right to be out there than Haughey. Chris de Burgh is a genuine football fan, a supporter of Liverpool FC: indeed, when full-back Markus Babbel was struck down by a debilitating virus, de Burgh made a personal intervention, attempting to heal him with his powers.

  He did not succeed. But he meant well.

  And in Rome, he had entertained the team in their hotel, which helps to explain why he had access all areas. It fact, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Chris was going to see the Republic long before he was in a position to get there in a private jet.

  Haughey never gave a tuppenny damn about football, though in the heat of that Italian summer night, no-one would be reminding us of those invitations to Lansdowne Road from the FAI, which he had ignored. Some will say that this is what makes us unique, that it is impossible to imagine the Prime Minister of any other country in the world joining the celebrations in this way, out on the running track, again leaving aside the minor detail that there was ostensibly nothing to be celebrating.

  And maybe it is a good thing that our leader would do this, and the British Prime Minister wouldn’t. In fact, it would be hard to imagine the leader of Togo out there, with Togo’s leading balladeer in close attendance.

  It seems that Paddy is always destined to be the mad fella — even at the biggest party with an international guest-list, he will insist on it.

  And it would be a good thing — in fact it would be a great thing — if this willingness of the Taoiseach to get down with the people was part of a broader story of sporting ambition, with the government backing all sorts of sporting endeavours and rightly taking the credit for it.

  But it wasn’t quite like that, in 1990.

  For example, there was no 50-metre swimming pool in Ireland at that time, nor were there any plans to build one. There was hardly even a running track. And you don’t really need to know much more than that, to form a view of Official Ireland’s commitment to sport, and Haughey’s entitlement to the cheers of the Green Army, on that night.

  In Togo, they’d probably got around to building a pool, and maybe even filling it with water, some time back in the 1970s. But not in Ireland.

  Still, it somehow suited our idea of life as a cabaret, to have Haughey there taking his bow at Italia 90, just as he materialised for Stephen Roche on the podium at the Tour de France.

  Even Berlusconi, a man with no limits, who had contributed some of his own money to the betterment of football in his country, would not be seen celebrating on the pitch with the Azzurri when they actually won the World Cup in Germany.

  But that night in the Stadio Olimpico, we wound it all up with something akin to an open-air episode of the Late Late Show — a bit of Jack and the Boys In Green, a bit of Chris de Burgh, a bit of Haughey, even a bit of Dunphy. And with the best wishes of the Pope still with us, a little bit of religion. And the entire country — and for once we literally meant the entire country, every man, woman and child — watching it.

  And Liam Brady watching it too, in his street clothes.

  Ah, it was not right, in so many ways, and yet it still felt good to see us there, for once in our lives. It felt good to see Paul McGrath out there, with the world watching, displaying in one movement down the right and a cross to the head of Niall Quinn, why we deserved to be there, for him if for no other reason.

  But Walter Zenga saved the header, and we didn’t trouble him much after that.

  Deep down we felt that maybe Packie could have done better with that shot from Donadoni, that he could have palmed it wide or over the bar or anywhere except straight to Totò Schillaci, who was on fire.

  But we just don’t have enough heroes to be casting them aside for one debatable indiscretion. And anyway, as a few more of us were starting to understand, that’s football.

  You could even see a certain maturity in all this, in the way we were able to listen to what Dunphy was saying, and know there was something in it, and still give the lads the most massive homecoming in Dublin on the day after they got knocked out. We had reached the last eight of the World Cup at our first attempt, and yet on the front page of the biggest Sunday paper we were reading a lament.

  And for that, Paddy can feel just a bit grown-up.

  Not that he would sit with that feeling for too long. There would be a homecoming, with Jack becoming increasingly and understandably terrified that the children running alongside the bus would be killed. But there was also the matter of England v Cameroon in the quarter-final.

  There was still something in it for us, even on the day after we were finished.

  ——

  The prospect of Cameroon and England was like waking up with a hangover after a party to realise another session has started in the pub up the road, and they’re asking for you.

  RTÉ was still remarkably doing the right thing, covering the homecoming live, in its entirety. There are men of my acquaintance, hardened journalists, who have been known to watch this on video after a few drinks and to have a good cry — though on the subject of crying, in the context of Italia 90, Jimmy Rabbitte in Roddy Doyle’s The Snapper has this to say: ‘drunk doesn’t count’.

  And perhaps it is right that the players had the best view on the flight from Rome, when the pilot changed direction over Dublin to show them the scene down below, the throngs that were waiting for them when they got off the plane, which had been named Saint Jack.

  They would be welcomed by Mr Haughey, who had arrived home before them, and they would be taken by open-topped bus from the airport to O’Connell Street, the same street that had been entirely deserted in the middle of the afternoon for the Romania match, resulting in astonishing pictures in the papers of the city’s main thoroughfare looking like the set of High Noon before the shooting started.

  For the homecoming, it was estimated that 300,000 had gathered in or around O’Connell Street, while about 50,000 Germans turned out to hail the new World Champions — we should mention in passing that Germany would beat Argentina 1-0 in the final, a predictably poor game settled by a penalty, confirming the fact that whilst all World Cups should be held in Italy, the next time it would be nice to see some football as well.

  Did Argentina morally deserve to win because of the way Maradona had been kicked and kicked and kicked again by every member of every team who encountered him? No, they had black-heartedly played for penalties like the lowest of them.

  RTÉ kept winning all the way. There was even reason to believe that Montrose had been seized by the spirit of the BBC in the glory days, when they put together a sequence of the Republic’s highlights matched with Edith Piaf singing ‘No Regrets’. For Paddy to have been on the ran-tan for a month solid, at home and abroad, and to be able to say with some sincerity that
he had no regrets, was astonishing.

  The highlights package, of course, was not exactly as aesthetically pleasing as Carlos Alberto scoring the fourth goal for Brazil in the Azteca Stadium in 1970 — it was mostly Packie hoofing them up and keeping them out — but the indomitable spirit of Piaf seemed to merge with the indomitable spirit of Paddy, to produce an emotional tour de force.

  And Nelson Mandela, the most indomitable of them all, just happened to be receiving the Freedom of Dublin on the afternoon of the homecoming.

  It had been awarded to him in 1988 when he did not even have the freedom of Robben Island, a gesture which reflected all the fun we had had in the 1980s, going to gigs the proceeds of which would go to the Anti-Apartheid movement. Or perhaps dancing in Leeson Street clubs with a few bottles of red inside us, to the sounds of ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ by Special AKA — yes, we all did what we could.

  But there was a man who was on the plane home from Italy, one of the Boys In Green, who had made an actual contribution. The full-back Chris Hughton had been one of ten sportsmen that Mandela had asked to meet on his release, to convey his appreciation of the good work they had done, over the years — Chris was wearing a Mandela T-shirt on the day we spoke to him in Windmill Lane, on the day of the recording of the anthem for Euro 88.

  But he had done more than wear the T-shirt. And Mandela wanted to meet him. Seeing as the two men were going to be in town on the same day, strenuous efforts were made by activists such as Kader Asmal of the Anti-Apartheid movement, to bring Hughton and Mandela together. But with the flight from Italy delayed, and with the vastness of the crowds, it didn’t happen.

  So on this day of liberation, the honouring of Mandela at the Mansion House became a sort of a warm-up for the civic reception that would happen later at the Bank of Ireland in College Green, ‘Ooh-aah-Paul-McGrath’s-Da’, the crowd would chant, paying Mandela the highest compliment they could bestow.

  We were in a very good place that day, human kindness overflowing.

  And now, were the Indomitable Lions of the Cameroon going to give us one for the road?

  They were playing England that night in Naples, in the quarterfinal.

  The first African team to qualify for the quarter-final of a World Cup had played with an exuberance which had brought them red and yellow cards, while England were looking a good bet to win the Fair Play award, perhaps the only trophy they would take home.

  It was probably the best football match of the tournament, if you were interested in that sort of thing. Cameroon were taking England apart at times, the commentators delighting Paddy with observations that all the sophisticated stuff was being played by the men in green, while the stolid journeymen of England, playing their Third-World standard of football, tried to hang on somehow.

  With about eight minutes to go the Indomitable Lions were leading the Three Lions 2-1. Then a bit of ‘naïve’ defending — naïve being the racist code for ‘wild’, ‘undisciplined’, ‘typically African’ — sent Lineker flying and with a degree of composure which in another context might be regarded as admirable, he stuck away the equaliser. He did the same thing in extra time.

  And though all of Ireland mourned, yet again we were comforted by the thought that there is always someone worse off than ourselves, in this case the unfortunate people of Cameroon, who must have been gutted to lose like this. What was it like to boss the game as they had done, to play the champagne football, and to be going home anyway? We would never know such grief, but we were saddened enough to see England in the semi-final, though it raised a familiar dilemma for us — given our voracious interest in them, we needed them to qualify for major tournaments and to go as far as possible in them to sustain that interest of ours.

  So, perversely, by staying alive in Italia 90, they were also keeping it alive for us. They were making it possible for us to squeeze a few more sparks out of it.

  We would not rest until we knew their fate.

  It would not entirely ruin it for us, if they went and won it, but it would challenge us. And Paddy doesn’t really like a challenge, in that sense.

  By now we were well aware that, when they weren’t supporting us, the English were actually feeling quite enthusiastic about their own team, and enjoying Italia 90 with at least some of the fervour that we had shown.

  But apart from their best wishes, they had one more gift for us. They gave us another great defeat, against the Germans in the semifinal in Turin, with Gazza weeping and the one he called The Waddler blasting that last spot-kick over the bar.

  Then, and only then, were we ready for Pavarotti.

  We can debate the pivotal nature of that period in Ireland, the tipping points; we can argue about the knock-on effects of Italia 90 on various aspects of Irish life, its influence on our psychology, our philosophy, our prosperity and our way of being in the world. But the one thing we know for sure is that the Three Tenors concert started something that is still with us today and will probably be with us for the foreseeable future. Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and José Carreras, singing in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla on the eve of the Final of Italia 90, can be held directly responsible for much that followed in Ireland in the three-tenors genre.

  At the time of writing, it is estimated that there are approximately 459 groups of men, three in number, with tenor voices of the Irish variety, going around calling themselves The Three Irish Tenors, or the Three Tenors from Ireland, or Ireland’s Three Tenors or Tenors of Ireland Three, as well as peculiar off-shoots such as The Priests, doubtless spawning The Three Irish Priests, Three Priests from Ireland and so on forever.

  But it seemed like a swell idea at the time.

  If we must listen to three tenors, let it be these three tenors, in a glorious Italian setting. With the orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, last seen waving the baton in front of the New York Philharmonic, playing ‘Rhapsody In Blue’.

  Pavarotti had already had a good World Cup, with ‘Nessun Dorma’.

  What we didn’t quite realise, on the night, was that this would become a new form of corporate entertainment, from which not even Paddy would be exempt — on the contrary, he would take it and make it his own. When you think about it, opera singers had been doing a form of corporate entertainment for years before the concept was officially named. Indeed, opera is the perfect form of corporate entertainment — it has high-class connotations to those who don’t know any better; it is mostly in a foreign language so it’s all right if you don’t have a clue what’s going on; it is ridiculously expensive; and you’re only allowed in if you’re dressed respectably.

  And now it was associating itself with sport, making it irresistible to the corporate sector and greatly assisting in the creation of a toxic sub-culture that is still with us.

  The Three Tenors on the night were a novelty and they gave big performances but even against that fabulous backdrop of ancient Rome, there were moments when you could see how this thing could turn ugly, in the wrong hands.

  They were doing ‘operatic’ versions of songs from West Side Story which merely confirmed that the original ‘American’ versions were innately superior, that pop music had for long been the greater art form, and that this ‘high-class’ stuff had become music for people who don’t really like music — the fur coat brigade who can otherwise be found in the theatre on opening nights. They were all there in the crowd, these well-dressed barbarians, many of them doubtless believing that they were raising the tone of what had otherwise been a vulgar festival.

  We remembered that Placido Domingo had made an album with John Denver and we figured that these were the people who bought it, as company for their other two albums. Pavarotti would work with artists of a higher calibre, such as Elton John, and there was always a certain grandeur about anything he did. But for all their vocal gymnastics, he and his cohorts took corporate entertainment to a new level that night in the Baths of Caracalla, and for that they must be condemned.

  The corporate sector w
as moving in on sport in general in a big way by this stage, and particularly on football. By the time of the opening match of the 1998 World Cup in Paris, commentators would be remarking that there was no atmosphere in the ground, apparently unaware that there were hardly any people at these showpiece events any more, just well-lunched executives with free tickets.

  And the new kid in town, Corporate Paddy, was watching too. With interest.

  We started out with Christy Moore in Time magazine, now Paddy was grasping the other end of it, maybe the wrong end of it, and making his way towards Forbes magazine. Those fabled flights to Rome, in which everyone who was anyone tried to get to the Stadio Olimpico for the quarter-final, was perhaps the first ostentatious flexing of Paddy’s corporate muscle.

  It wasn’t quite what we had envisaged, on those endless nights at the Hot Press. Remembering how we had felt about things back then, John Waters described it to me like this: ‘We probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you exactly what we wanted,’ he said. ‘But if you’d presented us with some putative outcome, we’d certainly have been able to tell you whether it fitted in to that picture. And what you can say for certain about what happened from 1990 onwards, is that it wasn’t what we wanted. In fact, it had almost nothing of what we wanted in it.’

  Our rich people were really getting off on the Boys In Green. Arnold O’Byrne had company now, ‘putting de boot in’, and those guys love making analogies between football and what they do. Even if what they do is selling pensions, they like to think it is not dissimilar in certain ways to what Totò Schillaci was doing.

  So they came on board in a big way towards the end of Italia 90, and thereafter they would be seen supporting the lads from the good seats in Wembley, at the Giants Stadium, wherever they felt they were needed. Men who owned 24 pubs and who could afford to get to matches in a private jet were carrying on like mad fellas who were still working for McAlpine and living in digs in Cricklewood. The rich Paddy is torn between his desire to flaunt it, and his equally strong desire to play the underdog, the outsider — even though he can pick up the phone and call a government minister at any time of the day or night and get things done, he has some emotional need to see himself still in the role of the rapparee, who acquired his wealth despite the best efforts of the Establishment to thwart him.