Rep. Of Ireland… 3
Hungary… 2
You hardly need reminding that to say yours truly an animal lover would be the understatement of this or any century. Outside of livestock and bloodstock, one would very much be a canine person rather than feline.
Yet there were always cats around the place too when I was young. Mostly for the purposes of keeping unwanted vermin visitors away from the shed where the seed potatoes were stored and out of the vegetable garden in general.
At some point, a mammy cat came in across the fields with two kittens. Around the same time, I had golf hole on one of the smaller lawns at the back of the house. Where SOP – standard operational procedure – was to take my legs off the foot plates and taking the plates off the manual chair of the day allowing yours truly to thrash away, imagining I was Seve or Christy O’Connor Jnr or Des Smyth.
Now, my father never played golf but he could and probably should have. He certainly had the eye for it. Anyway, whenever he and I were out on the ‘putting green’ greatest craic was derived from the fact that one of the kittens – who himself christened Puskas – used run after the golf balls like a greyhound stalking a hare.
Which, in an admittedly circuitous way, brings us to the nub of today’s offering. At the time, I’d no idea that Puskas was a real person, let alone a Hungarian football legend regarded as one of the best to ever lace up a pair of boots. I’ll never forget him now, though, as the stadium in Budapest named in honour of Ferenc Puskas became the venue for the latest and quite possibly the greatest Irish sporting miracle of all time.
Yes, this is that big. So move over Giants Stadium – nothing ever has or ever will usurp Genoa – step aside BOD’s hat-trick in Paris, any number of ROG drop goals you wish to nominate and pull up Dawn Run before she began to get up. Consider yourselves all eclipsed.
Life indeed moves in mysterious ways. The routine of a writer, and particularly one who predominantly operates in sport, tends to very much change with the seasons. Thus, weekends tend to consist of channel hopping between GAA, Soccer, Horse Racing, Rugby, Darts, Basketball and whatever else might crop up.
And so it was on what will forever more henceforth be known as Troy Parrott Appreciation Day. From Ballygunner disposing of Sarsfields with surprising ease, Eire Og eventually doing likewise with Loughmore/Castleiney, to Terence O’Brien and John Shinnick taking the Troytown Chase prize back to the Banks of their own Lovely Lee with them and Rory McIlroy again winning the race of another kind to Dubai.
However, even in the midst of all that, the gut feeling was inescapable that Heimir’s men at the very least had it in them to become heroes. Temptation right there was to quote David Bowie and say just for one day but was of course actually going to be a second one after they had already pulled off the seemingly highly unlikely by defeating Portugal – ranked No. 5 in world football – just four days earlier.
Doubtless, there will be a cohort diving in to peddle the ‘If Ronaldo wasn’t sent off’ trope, but, aside from the fact that if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle, I firmly believe Ireland would have beaten the Portuguese even if CR7 had stayed on and/or if they had Bruno Fernandes, Luis Figo and Eusebio all packaged together. Just a gut feeling.
Yes even after the boys in gree…eh, white, went behind after four minutes. Everyone loves an underdog story, don’t they? And, notwithstanding the dispatch of the petulant one and his colleagues a few days beforehand, a perhaps large part of the national psyche couldn’t allow ourselves believe we could do it.
But the players did. Ultimately that was all that mattered. You can’t say an engine is beyond repair if you’re not the one with the spanners and socket set. Hence why even when the locals did go a goal up early on, there was no panic. No dropping of heads.
Instead, they stealthily and skillfully chissled their way back into the contest akin to Fred Dibnah chipping away at a chimney. Until Chiedozie Ogbene became the shoot by which the end product reached its intended base camp.
That is to say, causing enough chaos in the Hungarian box so as to ensure a penalty ensued from which the Parrott repeated the trick from Thursday night and loaded the onion bag for the home side to chew on.
And, the thing is, even after Dominik Szlobislai of Liverpool had put the reds back in front, there was a reassurance coming from somewhere that the goose wasn’t cooked yet. The new order were serving notice that they were about to make their mark.
Caoimhin Kelleher and Seamie Coleman and Ryan Manning and Ogbene and Festy Obeseile and the mesmeric Parrott set about making their own piece of history. So too Liam Scales.
Kelleher repelled the best of what Szlobislai threw at us, and, where one man couldn’t carry the hopes of an entire nation on his back, it could, with obvious justification, that Troy Parrott had done so for the hopes of our nation.
But, as Eamonn Sweeney wonderfully put it in Monday’s Irish Independent each and every Irish player, and many more besides, deserve our thanks and gratitude. I may not have been slightly as romantic about it as the Sligo man, but his points were crammed with credance.
Sporting success can do things to a soul’s physical and mental health which it can actually be difficult to articulate. Though sometimes things take on a route of their own. It’s the only explanation for the episode of Laochra Gael aired on TG4 being that featuring former Limerick goalkeeper Joe Quaide.
Now, for obvious reasons the following was an unfortunate ‘highlight’ of the show was the amazing resurrection by Offaly in the closing stages of the 1994 All Ireland SHC Final.
Troy’s trilogy of treasures had bellowing echoes of that Faithful finale, and, just as that flabbergasting finale had set Offaly on the road to further success shortly thereafter, Parrott’s pilfering of the basket of Budapest goodies on offer may very well do likewise. Perhaps sooner than we could have dreamt of.
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