Ireland are facing one of the in-form teams in Europe, whose unbeaten run over the past three years is lurking them towards world record territory.

“So what do you make of VAR?” the guy behind the counter in my local garage asked the customer in front of me in the queue.

'So many houses in Ireland hadn’t water or sewerage and you were watching man do something you could hardly imagine'

Limerick FC 0 Shamrock Rovers 1

For the newest generation of Irish football fans, Euro ‘88 belongs to the remote past. France 2016 will be their first time, and just maybe, let’s hope, the best of times too.

His 23-year-old son routinely tells him he’s old-fashioned but Seamus Durack has never left the coalface of hurling these last 50 years. Be it senior or under-age teams (this year he completed a two-season stint with his own Éire Óg seniors in Ennis), he has made sure to remain relevant.

For Dalymount Park, the fervent hope must be that we can soon be calling it the once and future home of Irish football.

When League of Ireland soccer returns to Limerick’s Markets Field after an absence of 31 years tonight, those old enough to remember the good old days of soccer in Limerick will spot the changes inside the stadium immediately.

“It was tremendous, a bit of a fairytale.”

He may no longer be with us, but Páidí Ó Sé remains the tie that binds.

The FAI could be facing further payouts to disgruntled former employees after Packie Bonner’s ex-personal assistant settled her case for unfair dismissal.

He has been accused of overlooking domestic affairs and, in particular, showing an unyielding level of disrespect to the Airticity League, but managers and players of the country’s top club sides are unified in their support of the FAI’s decision to keep Giovanni Trapattoni in the Republic of Ireland job.

One man left unhappy by the news that Giovanni Trapattoni is to remain as Republic of Ireland boss was Eoin Hand, who suggested prior to last night’s show of support from the FAI that now was the time for the Italian to be left go.

The late Con Houlihan had “an extraordinary pride of place”.

STUTTGART, June 12, 1988. Ray Houghton’s goal. Packie Bonner defying Gary Lineker and everything else England could throw at him. The full-time scoreboard reading ‘England 0 Rep of Ireland 1. And, beneath it, the Green Army going positively bonkers.

With less than a week to go, we are still mired, rear wheels spinning, in nostalgia.

John B Keane’s pub in Listowel remains the haunt of poets, storytellers and musicians, writes Dónal Hickey

Former Republic of Ireland manager Eoin Hand has urged Giovanni Trapattoni to take Sunderland star James McClean to this summer’s European Championships.

Some of Ireland’s favourite sporting heroes from the world of rugby, soccer, hurling and Gaelic football will be in Ballyroe Heights Hotel, Tralee tomorrow night to help raise funds for the Paul Curran Cancer Trust.

It doesn’t seem long ago but it’s more than a decade all the same. Paul O’Connell, raw and big-boned, was 21 when I first set eyes on him. It wasn’t long before I wanted to throttle him.

MICHAEL O’NEILL was last night named Airtricity/Soccer Writers Association of Ireland Personality of the Year for 2011.

“LIFE is too short to hold a grudge, also too long,” a wise man once reflected, clearly outside the earshot of Angelo Mosca and Joe Kapp — the two septuagenarian ex-football players, who made news worldwide this week when they brawled at a Canadian Football League alumni lunch, over an incident that happened in 1963.

EVEN all these years later, with Ireland just one game away from qualifying for a major tournament, Eoin Hand sometimes thinks about just how close he was to qualifying for Spain 82, only for that “cheat” of a Portuguese referee in Brussels.

WITH a few weeks to go, I feel we are still at a safe enough remove from the European Championship play-offs for your (admittedly nervous) correspondent to make an unusually bold prediction: Ireland will qualify for the 2012 finals in Poland and Ukraine.

LATE breaking news from this small capital city shoe-horned into the high Pyrenees: rumours of the distress of the Andorran pitch appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

GREETINGS from Moscow where, with our usual sense of timing, we arrived here late on Sunday night and managed to miss the Russian capital’s annual ‘City Day’ by a matter of hours.

CHEATING. Disgusting. A tragedy.

IRELAND’s crucial World Cup play-off game against France in Paris on Wednesday is still threatened with a complete television and radio blackout in this country.

EOIN HAND claimed last night that Ireland would not be preparing for a World Cup play-off this week if Raymond Domenech and not Giovanni Trapattoni was manager of the boys in green.

“I’M feeling fine and I’ll be fit to play against France.”

How nice, I thought, they remembered.

KEVIN HUNT, the club legend who captained Bohemians to a memorable double in 2001, could be celebrating a double of a different kind on Sunday.

Former Ireland manager Eoin Hand, has expressed his views on the recent appointment of Giovanni Trappatoni saying that the Italian's vision gives Irish supporters genuine grounds for optimism.

After intensive lobbying by the Football Association of Ireland, soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, has changed the rule in relation to players playing for three clubs in a 12-month period.

THEY say that life doesn’t owe you a living but I still maintain that Irish football owes me 50p.

THE FAI yesterday passed a rule allowing for the introduction of a controversial compensation scheme for the training of future professional players in Ireland.

Former Ireland manager Mick McCarthy is angry some of Steve Staunton’s “ex-colleagues, peers and friends” have heaped further pressure on the under-fire national team boss.

In the middle of international week the Examiner’s football correspondent Liam Mackey reflects on the state of the nation after the draw with Germany and ahead of the rematch with Cyprus and also takes a look at the resumption of the Premier League campaign. You’re all exercised by the future of the Irish game and the forthcoming Drogs v Cork game but there are views, also, on English football (and rugby!) supporters; Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry; Avram Grant’s ability to count up to ten; the Merseyside derby and what it might mean for Benitez; whether United might be persuaded to spend big on Drogba and a rallying call for Martin Jol.

FOUR Irish clubs have had their coffers swelled by Everton.