The tallest of tall orders

A QUESTION: has an Irish team ever gone into a game as bigger outsiders than the one Giovanni Trapattoni will send into action against Spain here in Gdansk tonight?

The answer is probably yes but only if we go back almost to the dawn of Irish football time, that sepia-tinted era when the players all looked like your old man and footballs were carved from blocks of stone, when matches routinely ended with scorelines like 5-3 and ‘plucky Eire’ was taking its first toddler steps in the big, bad world of the international game.

But in what we might call the modern game? No, I can’t really think of any precedent for this.