TV review: Tony Cascarino's Extra Time is riveting television

Tony Cascarino in action during the Republic of Ireland v Spain qualifier for FIFA's 1994 World Cup. Pic: David Davies/Offside via Getty Images

In Tony Cascarino: Extra Time (RTE Player), journalist Paul Kimmage says Tony Cascarino is one of the best people he ever met.

Tony Cascarino doesn’t agree. He sees himself, flaws and all.

It makes for riveting TV at times. The show has a headline hook. 

His mother’s father wasn’t Irish as initially thought, so one of Ireland’s best every strikers wasn’t actually qualified to play for the Republic under the grandfather rule. But that’s really a side-note.

His opening monologue sketches a chaotic private life, where he had a child with one woman while married to another.

There is light with the shade. 

Tony Cascarino has an incredible array of glasses; he nearly became a hairdresser; his first professional club bought him for a set of tracksuits; he puts mayonnaise on his Corn Flakes.

Jack Charlton’s pitch to get him to play for Ireland went, “I saw you playing for Gillingham, I thought you were shit.” 

It worked and Cascarino went on to score one of those penalties in the quarter-final shoot-out in Italia ‘90.

Over scenes of the homecoming in Dublin, we have Cascarino reading from his autobiography saying his wife was worried about the attention he was getting from female fans. 

Her instincts were spot on, because Cascarino was as he put it himself, "infected with the disease of me.”

His career peaked shortly after, before a slow decline set in and he was let go by Chelsea. 

Then redemption, when he’s signed by Marseille, who are looking for players on the cheap after a bribery scandal.

The fans ended up calling him Tony Goal. And then he dumps his wife, and mother of his two sons, with a short note that he leaves on the kitchen table.

It’s a mic drop moment. There is no way you could see Tony Goal in the same light after that. 

His life-long friend Andy Townsend says Cascarino was always “a spontaneous sort of bloke”, which is one way of putting it.

His second marriage floundered with his wife heading off to Tahiti with their daughter.

The show ends with Tony reflecting on his life, how he feels he has changed, that he is a better person, until “I do something wrong and I’m a naughty boy again.”

That would have been a charming impish ending, if it wasn’t for that note on the kitchen table.

Cascarino is bright enough to know that his private life has soiled his legacy. 

I came away from this liking him a bit less than I did yesterday. But he’s full and frank here – give it a watch.