They don’t make memories like they used to.
Ray Houghton has played 73 times for Ireland. He’s played in two World Cups. He’s won leagues and cups with three different clubs. He put the ball in the England net.
He’s got a career of accolades and accomplishments to look back over but none of them compare to 1987, sitting in a hotel in Glasgow. Sitting with his team mates, sitting with Irish fans around a piano – everyone singing together.
Ireland were on the verge of qualifying for their first ever major tournament and the memories of the buzz around the place will never leave Houghton. Not the football especially. The buzz.
“My fondest memories are of ’88. I had great times in ’90 and ’94 – more so in ’90, America is just too vast going from area to area, three hours on a plane,” he spoke at the Aviva Stadium.
“But ’88, I think it was only eight days and it was all over for us. But it was exciting times and just having the fans coming along with you, being in your hotel, it was a great time.
“I remember we played Scotland in a qualifying match in Hampden Park when we beat them 1-0, Mark Lawrenson scored. I remember in the hotel, we had a room downstairs and someone went and got a piano and brought it down. It was all the players and fans sitting around, the fella was playing the piano, and we were singing songs. Where would you get that now?
“That was 1987, nearly 30 years ago, and that still sticks in my mind. Of all the games I’ve played in, I’ve played in 70-odd games for Ireland, but that one, being with the fans, playing the piano, I remember it like it was yesterday.”
In Ireland’s first major tournament, in their first game, against England of all teams, Ray Houghton would score his first international goal and pass into the annals of legend.
That 1988 tournament wasn’t as slick as it might’ve seen on the pitch. It was anything but.
“It was probably the funniest [campaign],” Houghton said. “We hadn’t a clue what we were doing. It was the blind leading the blind, I’ve got to be honest with you. The fans didn’t have a clue what they were doing. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing. It was just a big journey – a big party time.
“It was amazing. Nothing like the World Cup. The World Cup is a hundred times, a million times bigger. You have more teams – we only had eight teams back then – and then you’ve got the World Cup and it’s like, ‘Wow’. It’s off the scale because of the media attention. You get picked up at the airport and there’s guards and police everywhere. You walk down the road and there’s police with you.
“It wasn’t like that at the Euros, there was a bit more freedom. It was brilliant in a sense that no-one gave us a prayer going into it. We were meant to be cannon fodder for everyone else – they were all going to hammer us and we were just going to walk away as little Ireland, there ye go, you’ve been well and truly hammered.
“To beat England in the first game and play as well as we did against Russia, it was great.”
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