Robbie Brady celebrates his goal. Inpho, Donall Farmer.
By Ray O’Hanlon
rohanlon@irishecho.com
Robbie Brady’s winning goal against Italy in the European Championships yesterday is a highlight reel for the ages.
But it took an eternity to come about.
Back in 1994, Ray Houghton’s winning goal against Italy came early in the game, but was followed by an eternity of worry for the legions of Irish fans who had crammed into Giants Stadium.
So, from the vantage point of the sweating, fidgeting, nail-biting over excited fan, which is the better way to do it?
At the start of the game, or at the death?
Close one.
In 1994, I was sitting behind one of the goals with worried, furrowed brow as the game got underway.
This was a clash with Italy after all, and they were consistently one of the best teams in the world and very hard to get back at even if they scored even just one goal.
It was a hot afternoon in New Jersey.
Keeping a cool head was never going to be easy.
And when Houghton scampered across the pitch in front of the Italian goal and let fly that shot keeping one’s cool was about to become impossible.
The moment is etched into my memory.
And the memories of tens of thousands more.
The ball flew into the Italian net. I can still see the net shaking. There was a split second of shocked silence.
Then the place erupted.
And when it did an extraordinary thing became evident: the Italians fans hadn’t turned up.
Before the goal it was hard to make out the comparative number of fans, in part because the Irish and Italian flags look familiar, especially in bright light.
But when Houghton struck the Irish hit the sky with a collective roar.
A quick look around revealed that the Irish fans outnumbered the Italians by a very, very big number.
This was suddenly a home game.
But of course it would also be a long one.
Scoring so soon was brilliant of course.
It electrified the place.
And also took years off the lives of the now jubilant Irish.
There would be roughly eighty minutes to hold out against the Azzurri.
Being Irish, and being prone to a somewhat fatal realism about our place in the soccer firmament, very few of us were thinking about a second goal.
It would be all about defense, manning the ramparts and repelling the blue horde.
The horde was duly repelled of course and the game went down in Irish sporting lore.
Yesterday, in Lille, an industrial town in the northwest of France, the Irish and the Italians were at it again.
The Italians tend to be slow starters in big tournaments. That was the case in 1994.
But they have a knack of picking up the pace and advancing deep into the later stages, not infrequently to the actual final.
In Euro 2016 the Italians actually began at a fast clip and had secured passage into the round of sixteen before the kick-off against the Republic, who were facing elimination if they did not win and a concession of island bragging rights to Northern Ireland who had already qualified for the elimination stage.
This was always going to be one of the jittery ones.
And it was to the point that Ireland did not win a penalty they deserved, and as the game wore on looked like they would crash out as a result of a grim 0-0 draw.
So it can’t have been the easiest of nights for the Irish fans who have been charming their French hosts with behavior that is positively angelic compared to boorish counterparts, not least from among the ranks of Russian and English supporters.
A draw would have been doom.
But the sporting gods had other ideas.
With just minutes to go, Robbie Brady headed the ball into the Italian net, or as ESPN’s Tommy Smyth would have it, the “old onion bag.”
So now the fans of today – and likely some in Lille were veterans of Giants Stadium – would be treated to the peculiar quantum physics of a high stakes football game.
Eighty minutes is an eternity.
So is five minutes.
But even eternities pass, at least in life.
And when your team wins a game such as this, this is the life worth living.
As for the question back at the top of this opus?
There is no answer.
It is not even required - if you have won in the end.
