A nation in denial has little support
“Let me offer something that, coming from the President of Ireland, might seem transformational,” he said. “As a follower of the beautiful game, I look ahead two months to Brazil and say that if Ireland cannot be at the World Cup finals, then I will raise a glass to England to go all the way.”
He might have left it at that but couldn’t help adding, with a smile, that he understood there might be some in the audience “not prepared to go quite that far”.
Now, that, I think, is what you call a knowing remark.
The president of Galway United before he became President of Ireland — where did it all go wrong, eh? — Michael D certainly knows his football at least as well as he knows his arts and culture, and would therefore have a keener understanding than most that, actually, it’s perfectly possible to support English football clubs and revere English books, comedy, television and rock ‘n’ roll while, at one and the same time, rooting for anyone but England on the football pitch.
And this, I have long contended, has nothing to do with 700 years of oppression and everything to do with 30 years of Jimmy Hill.
Being more concerned with the televised adventures of Batman at that time, I don’t recall England’s sole World Cup triumph but I will always be grateful to the fates that I’d come of age just in time to immerse myself in the greatest Mundial of them all, the finals in Mexico four years later.
It might seem hard to believe now but my recollection is that support for a wonderfully talented England team at that 1970 World Cup was the norm here in Ireland, me and my mates among the thousands who avidly collected those Esso coins featuring images of Charlton, Moore, Banks and all the rest of our gleaming, white-shirted heroes.
When Brazil beat them 1-0 we were shocked, although that didn’t stop us heading straight to the local green after the final whistle where, instantly, the missing of a sitter became known as “a Jeff Astle”, after the West Brom striker had spectacularly spurned the invitation of an open goal. And, then, when West Germany came from behind to knock the holders out in the quarter-finals, we were almost as traumatised as the English themselves.
I suspect I might even have shed a tear.
But we were young and resilient and quickly got over it, helped in no small measure by the growing realisation that, in the swashbuckling progress through the tournament of the Brazil team of Pele, Rivelino, Jairzinho, Tostao and Gerson, we were seeing the best there ever was and, perhaps, ever will be. We were all of us in thrall to the canary yellow and cobalt blue and knew, and could accept, that England no longer ruled the football world.
Problem is, they’ve been much slower to catch up across the water.
Which is where Jimmy Hill came in. He wasn’t necessarily the worst offender but he was one of the first and most prominent of the commentariat to convey the impression that, against all the evidence, England somehowremained the uncrowned kings of football. They were the nation which had given the game to the world, after all, and they were pretty damn riled that they hadn’t been given it back.
Thus kicked off English football’s Age of Denial, characterised by breathtaking expressions of entitlement, expectation and hubris, running all the way from Brian Clough’s dismissal of Polish keeper Jan Tomaszewski as “a clown” (just before he helped block England’s path to the 1974 World Cup), through Kevin Keegan’s ringing declaration that there’s “only one team going to win it now and that’s England” (just before Romania scored the 90th-minute decider at the World Cup of 1998), to all the latest popular variations on the theme, such as that Johnny Foreigner is prone to diving and the Premier League is — all together now — “the greatest league in the world”.
This sort of guff sticks in many a craw. Because if anyone is innocent or daft enough to think it’s a race memory of the GPO in 1916 which causes Irish onlookers to hoot with mirth whenever another penalty shoot-out goes pear-shaped for the “auld enemy”, they should try taking a dander north of Hadrian’s Wall, where Denis Law could be found hiding out on the golf course in 1966 for fear of seeing Bobby Moore lift the Jules Rimet (“the blackest day of my life,” the Scot called it); where men wearing kilts and German jerseys marched down Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow singing ‘Deutschland Uber Alles” during Italia 90; and where, to this day, you can find the following spoof Wikipedia entry for the aforementioned Mr Hill: “Single-handedly caused Scottish nationalism since any time Scotland and England played, the first, last and indeed middle words out of his mouth were ‘nineteen sixty six’. This inability to talk about anything else led to insurance companies north of the border refusing to insure TV’s due to so many being smashed in Jimmy Hill-inspired rages.”
The war is over? Lovely.
Now all we are saying is give Costa Rica a chance.
