Superheroes answer call

For 25 years, there has been a question that Ronnie Whelan has always meant to ask Tony Galvin.

It was just past midnight on the evening of Ireland’s cherished Euro 88 win over England and, as a rather drunk Whelan wandered back to his hotel room, he saw something he’s pretty sure wasn’t just part of some celebratory haze.

“I have to ask you this, Tony,” the former Liverpool player says. “Why were you running along the corridor with a black sheet on your back going ‘I’m a bat’? I just never got round to ask you that one.”

Part of the reason for the wait, at least, was because Thursday night was surprisingly the first time in a quarter of a century the Euro 88 squad gathered together for a proper reunion.

“There was always talk about it, and for Italia 90, but this is the first one,” enthuses Kevin Moran.

“It’s not easy to get together, we’re all scattered all over the place so, when something’s organised like this, it’s brilliant.”

He can say that again. To illustrate the difference in their post-game careers, Galvin himself was eventually and belatedly tracked down through his job working in the UK education system, while Gerry Peyton took time off from his position as goalkeeping coach at Arsenal. Chiropodist John Byrne couldn’t make it but, otherwise, Newstalk managed to bring back 10 of the 20-man squad for a night in aid of the John Giles Foundation.

“You fall back into it straight away,” Kevin Sheedy says. “That’s what we talk about, the laughs we had, the banter, the stories.”

Anecdotes are traded about Jack Charlton; others aren’t all that appropriate for publication. This is what true teams chat about; not so much the matches or the opposition, but all the fun around it. For all the supposed clichés about the side’s spirit, it is that genuine camaraderie that stands out on the night more than even recollections of Ray Houghton’s header or Whelan’s “shinner”. In the middle of chatting, Sheedy has to break off to receive a giant hug from physio Mick Byrne. “I don’t stop interviews for many people,” Sheedy apologises.

Byrne and many others ask about the former Everton player’s health after a recent struggle with bowel cancer, but Sheedy says all recent tests have “come back clear and 100% positive”. Within moments, he’s in a huddle with the other players, kitman Charlie O’Leary in the centre. At 89, O’Leary is not just still capable of holding court but all too keen to.

Houghton initially got a sense that this was a special team when Charlton called out his first ever starting XI.

“How he sort of knew you, he knew your first name, your second name, or not at all. Then he’d go on your height. The big fella was in goal, little Langan from Oxford, you’re on the right. John McGrath, you’re playing there. I was the little lad from Oxford on the right, then he came to Ian Brady — the Moors murderer.”

The actual Liam Brady of course played in that 1-0 win away to Scotland in 1987, which most of the squad cite as the match that truly solidified the approach, the team and the spirit.

“I remember being in that dressing room afterwards in the shower, and I’ll tell you what,” Moran laughs, “we sang the best version of Flower of Scotland you’ve ever heard! [Euro 88 itself] was the first time we got together as a group of players and that even created a better bond.”

At various points throughout the night, the players are shown footage of all the famous moments, and the responses are telling. There is total silence when the reaction to Houghton’s goal against England is shown.

“Basic chaos to be fair,” Whelan says of the celebrations. “Yes, we all believed that we’d beat England. We really did believe it... but when it was Ray that scored, we didn’t believe it.”

A 21-year-old Niall Quinn was watching from the bench, set to be brought on in the second half, but not just concerned with making history.

“I was a kid at the time, with John Sheridan and Liam O’Brien, and all we knew was if we got to the second round, there was a 5,000 punt bonus, and every save Packie made, we went ‘another chance to get the 5,000 pounds!’.

“As the game unfolded, I was called on with 26 minutes left. Within five, I was out of breath. Mark Wright and Tony Adams kept whacking me every time I came in and, before you even know where you are, you’re in this thing.”

“The two abiding memories I’ve got,” scorer Houghton says, “are Mick Byrne blessing himself to the Irish fans and Kevin Moran, for some reason, with the whitest lips because it was the hottest day.”

Exhaustion passed, exhilaration came. That was memorably shared with the fans, who were invited in to celebrate with the squad.

“That’s what it was at that stage,” Houghton says. “Whether that was right or wrong, people can make their own opinions about it. It was right for us at that time.”

Quinn concurs.

“So many people ask, ‘I bet you wish you were playing today’. Nope. We had it when it was amazing.”

In the next game, Ireland confounded expectations with a technically amazing display that should have brought so much more than a 1-1 draw against the USSR.

“People often ask did we have a meeting together to go against Jack’s wishes,” Whelan says. “It was nothing against Jack, it was just something that happened on the day.”

So did his memorable — if fortuitous — volley.

“We’d been practicing it in training,” he laughs. “I don’t even know what I was doing on the edge of the box, to be fair. I must have said it to Sheeds, you hang about there in the middle of midfield, I’ll go forward and see what happens.

“What happened with Wayne Rooney’s goal [against Manchester City], that was higher up his leg and that was never called a shinner!”

Ireland, unfortunately, never made it to that semi-final.

“We didn’t get the £5,000 because Wim Kieft scored,” Quinn says. “But we went close.”

The squad also became even closer.

“It was a different time but I would put our spirit, our collective, our belief, up against any team that plays today and they wouldn’t have beaten us.”

Houghton agrees.

“I remember there were games at Lansdowne Road and you look down the line, there’s Mick [McCarthy] as captain, then Packie, Paul McGrath, Kevin Moran, Niall, and you’re thinking no one’s going to upstage us today.

“If it comes to a war and it comes to whatever’s needed on that side of it, we’re going to come out on top today.”

And the other side of it all? Back to that corridor in Germany. What, exactly, was Galvin doing?

“We had to be in bed for 12 o’clock and I must have drunk quite a lot in a short space of time, and then I became a bat. I don’t know why. Such is life! I was hoping that wouldn’t be remembered.”

This team, however, was all about the memories.