Caught in an Athlone trap

WHEN Giovanni Trapattoni walks out at Croke Park this evening for his first game as manager of Ireland, the scene will be just a little bit different from the one he experienced on the only other occasion he was in the dug-out for a match in the Republic.

That was the celebrated day back in 1975 when Trapattoni, then on the coaching staff of AC Milan, found himself in homely St Mel’s Park for what the world of football assumed would be an entirely lop-sided clash between the Italian giants and plucky little League of Ireland representatives Athlone Town.

Instead, the game came close to producing one of the most remarkable upsets in European football history, as no less august an institution than the International Herald Tribune breathlessly informed its global readership the following day.