Ireland hit the right notes

IT WAS getting on for two in the morning and the plane home from Sofia after Saturday’s game was about an hour out of Dublin when the sing song started.

‘The Wild Rover’, ‘Singing In The Rain’, ‘We’re On The March With Trap’s Army’, even a blast of ‘Ole, Ole, Ole’ – all and more besides were present and correct. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t the supporters at the back of the plane making the noise, it was the Irish players at the front who were providing the entertainment, with Giovanni Trapattoni and Marco Tardelli benignly looking on and leading the applause.

After an exceptionally hard night’s work in Sofia and with a school’s out fever adding to the mood, here was the kind of celebratory spectacle which hadn’t been seen on an Irish team flight for a good number of years. Reflecting on the season’s end in Dublin yesterday, Trapattoni made an astute connection between the pleasure of the journey home and the pain through which people like Richard Dunne and Robbie Keane had played to help secure a precious World Cup point for Ireland in the Vassil Levski stadium.