From Henry to Heeb and dodgy refs in between.
Irish football fans have seen it all over the years in play-offs for European Championships and World Cups. But sadly our seven previous play-off ties have thrown up plenty more villains than heroes.
With two games in four days ahead against Bosnia and Herzegovina to decide our Euro 2016 fate, we’d love to avoid having to add another player, manager, referee or groundsman to the already lengthy list of enemies we’ve built up over the years.
So before we do just that, here are the top five blackguards who’ve done us out of our rightful place at a major tournament.
Panto Villain #5 – The FAI ‘blazers’
World Cup play-off 1966: Spain 1 Ireland 0.
This can apply to basically anyone wearing a blazer with an FAI badge on it. Actually, you can stretch that to anyone in the mid-1960s who thought it appropriate to start drinking brandy at lunchtime.
Jose Ufarte may be the man who’ll go down in history as having knocked us out of the running for the World Cup in England, but there is much more than a simple game to discuss about this controversial fixture in Paris.
Ireland and Spain ended up in a play-off in the first place after Syria withdrew from their three-team group.
An Ireland team featuring John Giles had beaten Spain 1-0 in Dalymount in May that year, before crashing to a 4-1 defeat in Seville in October.
With the teams level on two points each, and with goal difference still being a twinkle in the eye of amateur mathematicians, they only way to decide who would qualify was via a play-off.
This is where the fun began.
The one-off decider was initially due to be played in London, where Ireland would have been guaranteed the vast majority of a capacity crowd at Highbury, effectively a home game.
However, the match ended up being played in Paris, with allegations that the FAI agreed to move the game to the French capital because the Spanish struck a deal to hand over all the gate receipts in return for choice of venue.
Eamon Dunphy alleged that the FAI had sold out the Irish team at the time by agreeing to play the game in Paris, where the number of Spanish in the stadium outnumbered the Irish.
“We should have been playing the game in London at the designated venue in Highbury…. That was the venue that UEFA had nominated. But then the FAI got into a negotiation with the Spaniards and we went to Paris. It was pretty shabby. It was very shabby. It was shocking really.
“When you think about it in today’s terms… It wouldn’t happen today. When people look at John Delaney and complain about him. I think he’s done a great job for the FAI but the guys who were running it in the ’60s and the ’70s were something else. You couldn’t write them in a script.”
However, the truth is somewhat a little less clear with the Irish football documentary Green is the Colour claiming that Fifa themselves had nominated Paris, and that Joe Wickham of the FAI had brokered a deal to take the money from the game after that deal was announced.
Panto Villain #4 – Martin Heeb
Euro ’96 play-off – Holland 2 Ireland 0
The end of the Jack Charlton era was brought about by a young Dutch forward who cut through the Irish defence on an emotional, if less than memorable, night at Liverpool’s home ground of Anfield.
Patrick Kluivert may never have got the chance however if Ireland could have avoided a 0-0 draw with the tiny nation of Lichtenstein, and then two back-to-back thrashings by Austria.
A thumping by Portugal in one of our final games set us on track to face the Dutch, and miss out on Euro’96 in England.
But the writing was on the wall after a frankly unbelievable inability to get past the part-timers of Lichtenstein and their inspired goalkeeper Martin Heeb.
He may have been the villain of this game but really we only had ourselves to blame.
Panto Villian #3 – Gunter Benko
World Cup ’98 play-off – Belgium 3 Rep of Ireland 2
The final time Irish fans saw Ray Houghton and Andy Townsend in an Irish jersey was decided by a dodgy decision.
In torrential rain in Brussels, Ray Houghton made it 2-2 on aggregate, therefore cancelling out Luc Nilis’ away goal in Dublin.
At that point the momentum was with Mick McCarthy’s side, who looked to be on for the all important second.
However, in the 70th minute Ireland thought they had won themselves a defensive throw-in.
But the referee Gunter Benko overruled the decision of his linesman, and from the resulting throw, Luc Nilis came onto an speculative overhead kick to slot past Shay Given.
Poor Packie Bonner was left a frustrated figure after the game.
Panto Villain #2 – Unknown Turkish player who kicked Tony Cascarino as he left the field
Euro 2000 play-off – Turkey 1 Rep of Ireland 1 (Turkey go through on away goals)
Iran in 2001 was nothing compared to the almost pure naked hatred that the Irish team faced when they played Turkey in 1999.
The sides were level at 1-1 after the opening leg, but Mick McCarthy’s side had given up a crucial away goal after Tayfur was upended by Lee Carsley in the box.
There were no live TV pictures, and only 100 Irish fans present, to see a frustrating game end in controversy as Tony Cascarino was hit after the full-time whistle and with several other Irish players involved in scuffles with the home side.
The former Nancy striker described the final moments in an interview in the Sunday Independent last year
“The game ended and he ran across and started mouthing at me. I flicked out my foot and he tripped and the next thing he has just lumped me. I was shocked to be still standing, to be honest. I thought: ‘Cor! I can take a good punch’. And then I went for him and within seconds it was mayhem. A few of the police hit me with batons. I remember saying to one of them: ‘You’re meant to protect me, not hit me!’ Tony Hickey (the FAI security officer) got me out. We went back to the dressing room and there were cuts all over my face and Keaney was there and he just looked at me but said nothing. It was a really weird ending because I left the team at the airport.”
Panto villain #1 – Just have a bloody guess!
World Cup 2010 play-off – France 2 Rep of Ireland 1
Thierry Henry’s handball has become the JFK moment for Irish football as the former Arsenal striker’s five-finger discount allowed William Gallas to score the winner in the Stade de France.
We could have blamed Paul McShane, or Shay Given, as Roy Keane intimated in his acerbic interview while manager of Ipswich, but for sheer naked cheating,Henry could only bring more of a scowl across the face of any Irish person if had turned out that he was also CEO of Anglo Irish Bank.
The only saving grace was how brutal France turned out to in South Africa.
