‘It was an uproariously entertaining education to have known Con’
The setting was the press box at Wembley on the occasion of the England versus Ireland European Championship qualifier in 1991, a game fondly remembered for the fact that the visitors fairly battered the home side in a 1-1 draw to chalk up another of those celebrated moral victories of the Jack Charlton era.
The real stand-out moment of the night for me, however, was not Niall Quinn’s equalising goal or even Ray Houghton’s wasted opportunity to give Ireland the victory they deserved. The incident I most vividly recall occurred at half-time. Sitting just in front of me in the press box was none other than the great England World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore, who was there doing analysis of the game for a radio station. But when an Irish supporter approached on an autograph-hunting mission, he had, literally, bigger quarry in mind. Thus it was that the most golden of all the boys of the summer of ’66 found himself having to squeeze back in his seat so one star-struck fan could stretch his arm across him to get his match programme signed by Con Houlihan.
