When they’d ask Jeff Hendrick what he wanted to be when he grew up, he always gave one answer. “Professional footballer,” he’d say. Be realistic, they’d say. He’d think about what they said for a minute, muster all the realism he could and reply, “Professional footballer”.
From the age of eight, Hendrick played football with Robbie Brady at St Kevin’s Boys. Robbie Brady’s father Shay worked in Dublin Airport and at the European Championships in 2012, Damien Duff joked that whenever Shay saw Duffer going through the airport, he’d joke that Robbie would be joining them in the squad some day.
Robbie Brady joined the list of great Irish heroes in Lille on a night when Martin O’Neill unleashed raw emotion and found the energy that had missing last weekend.
When Robbie Brady scored the goal that put Ireland into the last-16, Jeff Hendrick was there again. At the end of an astonishing night, both men cried and there were a lot of tears.
Hendrick and Brady provided a vision for the future for Ireland in Lille on Wednesday night on an evening when for a long time Ireland looked like they were going to be denied a place in the knockout stages by an age-old problem: an inability to score goals.
They have worked hard to get to this point and there was so much to get excited about in Ireland’s performance, even when it looked like it would be another night of despair.
When Wes Hoolahan missed a chance seconds before Brady’s goal, it seemed everything was over. Wes had missed, what hope did Ireland have now? But then Wes got on the ball immediately and delivered a cross into the box for Brady to head in and the world looked very different.
I want this played at my funeral #IRLITA pic.twitter.com/9DdpzPHz7L
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) June 22, 2016
This was one of the most astonishing nights in Irish football history, a transformative night for a team which wanted so desperately to achieve something in this competition.
They achieved something on this humid night under the roof in Lille, an achievement which deserves to be placed high on the list of great Irish sporting nights.
Italy may have already qualified, but it took an Irish performance of astonishing character to show them that they didn’t care.
After 25 minutes, Hendrick attempted to find James McClean with an optimistic pass which went straight out for a throw.
O’Neill went to the touchline and told Hendrick to calm down. But only a little. Ireland had started with a ferocious intensity which had justified the daring selection from the manager and they weren’t going to stop.
Hendrick had made his intentions clear when he went through Alessandro Florenzi early on and emerged, quite staggeringly, without a yellow card.
This was the Ireland O’Neill wanted to see. They had been tentative and nervous in Bordeaux, but here they didn’t stop.
For 45 minutes, they put an Italians side which rarely showed any interest in the game on the back foot. If you wanted a quiet night, Ireland weren’t going to comply. Instead they were going to be a pest, like a man living in the flat upstairs who has a house party at 8am just as you come home from the night shift.
There was an embracing of chaos in O’Neill’s selection, with Hoolahan replaced by James McClean. Many had expected James McCarthy to be dropped, but O’Neill doubled down. He kept his place and instead Glenn Whelan was left out, a decision which O’Neill should have made after the Germany game last October.
As McCarthy strode over the ground, it was hard to believe this was the player who had meekly surrendered against Belgium or who was said to be carrying an injury.
For the first few minutes, the midfielders seemed a little bit confused about their positions. Shane Long was on the right, James McClean was on the left and the rest was to be decided upon.
This almost seemed to be part of Ireland’s approach. Ireland would not be ordered, they would cause confusion and never let Italy settle. If some of the confusion was in the minds of their own players, then that was a price worth paying.
But as Ireland found their positions, they advanced. Hendrick shot wide, Daryl Murphy’s header was tipped wide by Salvatore Sirigu and referee Ovidio Hategan joined the long list of Irish football villains.
He ignored a Leonardo Bonucci elbow on Shane Long as Ireland waited for a corner to be taken. He couldn’t give a penalty as the ball wasn’t in play, but there was no good reason to ignore the foul on McClean by Federico Bernardeschi in the box.
Some might have felt an Ireland goal was inevitable at that point, but there is never anything inevitable about an Ireland goal.
As the game wore on, it seemed to be conforming to another stereotype. This would be a moral victory, but we have had enough of those.
When Robbie Brady scored, everything changed. He was shaping a generation which doesn’t need to believe in moral victories.
