Ireland's Euro 2016 song should be done by someone English whose grandparents were Irish... Ed Sheeran

It’s time to focus. We wasted too much time on the Eurovision. 

It was pointless, literally. Ireland will always be behind the curve of the competition’s taste. This year’s song was fine. But how were we to know that supermarket music was out of fashion and Ukraine could win with a song about Russians invading your home and killing you all? Next year we can send the Wolfe Tones singing ‘Come Out Ye Black and Tans’ but by then the zeitgeist will have moved onto Peace or wolves in dungarees.

Our efforts should have been directed into a far more worthwhile task: Creating the definitive football song for the Euro 2016 in France.

It’s hard to write a great football song for a major championships. The song is shaped by the events which take place afterwards. ‘Give It A Lash Jack’ has some of the oddest lyrics ever forgotten... “Give a sermon, to the Germans. They thought that the Wall had died, ’til they came up against the Irish. Now they know it’s all a lie.”

Now maybe the writer was commenting on the German weltzschmerz — the general anxiety about the ills of the world. Or maybe he was stretching like Stretchy Stretcherson. But regardless, we remember it because of the word Jack. No song with Trapattoni is going to last as long.

The lyrics of ‘Put ’Em Under Pressure’ were essentially written by Jack Charlton, ironically when he was unaware he was writing song lyrics when he said those words and therefore under no pressure. Christy Moore’s Joxer Goes To Stuttgart was a classic but let’s not forget it was written after Euro ’88. It could talk about what actually happened.

Events have a habit of making football songs like these appear hollow in retrospect. Westlife did a song for the World Cup in Japan with lyrics like “We’re dreaming of goals in the Rising Sun/An Irish name on each and every one”. We all daydreamed in advance of that World Cup but even the most outlandish ones allowed for other teams scoring just to make it interesting. The song was called Here Come the Good Times.

After Saipan, in hindsight it would have been better to cover a Joy Division song. The official song for Euro 2012 was The Rocky Road to Poland. Given what happened at those championships, if the road there was Rocky, the road out was lunar.

There are three types of song – the official one, the charity one and the fans’ one. The video of the official one will have the team in tracksuits standing in a function room in a hotel located near the M50.

A number of shots will show the lads laughing in a bantertastic manner at the very notion of being in a song. There will also be shots of people putting their hand to their ears as they sing in order to get the note right – a futile exercise given the general ambient banter.

The charity one will be the same but without the players and instead have a few celebrities thrown in — maybe with one wild-card. Perhaps a Healy-Rae or whoever is this year’s Eddie Hobbs.

It’s about a 50% likelihood that a fans’ song will be to the tune of Galway Girl. There might even be a sneaky dig at Irish Water which will appear weird when shown on Reeling In The Years in 2050.

Whatever we do, we need to do it soon. Wales have released their song and it’s the Manic Street Preachers. And it’s a good song. James Dean Bradfield’s singing makes you think it’s part of the universal struggle against the Man.

We need equal star power. It should be done by someone English whose grandparents were Irish.

I’m looking at you, Ed Sheeran.