An Irishman's Diary

DURING a relaxed moment at Lansdowne Road on Tuesday – and on an unprecedented night in Irish football, they were all relaxed moments – I found myself pondering the issue of Estonian car security. It was suggested by those bilingual pitch-side ads for “Hörmann garage doors”, a product you don’t normally see advertised at games.

Were garage doors a big issue in the Baltic states, I wondered? A quick Google search revealed that the company founded in 1935 by August Hörmann (who in my native Monaghan, where we have our own form of umlaut, would have been known as “Hoorman the Doorman”) has a large presence throughout Europe. I also learned that the firm guarantees to provide every customer with his “individual dream door”. So if this is a gap in your life, reader, you now know where to go.

But the ads only added to the strangeness of Tuesday's game, except insofar as they seemed to provide an apt metaphor for how it would unfold. Surely this would be a night for catenaccio: "the door-bolt" defensive system perfected by Giovanni Trapattoni's generation of Italians. And indeed it was, until the moment when Shay Given – perhaps hypnotised by Hoorman-the-doorman's flashing messages – fell asleep with his garage open.

Pitch-side ads and foreordained result apart, the other odd thing about the occasion was the cascade of paper planes that formed the game’s back-drop. This came courtesy of a sponsor who’d left sheets of green cardboard on every seat, with a size and thickness that schoolboys of all ages quickly realised had superb aerodynamic potential.

Not everybody mastered the technology. A youngster in front of me launched several planes, all of which hit severe turbulence once airborne and crashed horribly. But many flights made it as far as the pitch.

And there was one beautiful moment when a plane took off from the upper west stand, sailed over our admiring heads, and continued serenely onto the playing surface, past the Irish back four, before landing gently half-way between the midfield circle and the penalty area. It was a small masterpiece of engineering – possibly a record paper-flight as well – and deservedly drew a warm round of applause from all who witnessed it.

THE PAPER PLANESwere symbolic too, of course. Because, as is sobering to recall now, the last time Ireland qualified for a European championships was in the very early days of Ryanair, before the concept of no-frills flying caught on. This must have been part of the reason that myself and a few friends drove all the way to Stuttgart in 1988.

Not that driving seemed a hardship then, when one thought little of making similar trips by bus and when the tour company involved could call itself – without apology – “Funtrek”.

That was before Ireland took a bizarre stranglehold on European aviation so that, these days, a cascade of low-cost flights penetrates daily to most corners of the continent, including Poland. The humble bus has not gone out of business, meanwhile, and commuter coaches now make the trip from Dublin to Warsaw. So fans hoping to travel to Euro 2012 will not lack options.

No doubt the secret hope of the more penurious will be that John Delaney, the FAI’s populist chief executive, dips once more into his famously deep pockets and lays on a few free planes (the pre-paid beer tab on board would go without saying); or that maybe his experience as a rail transport provider in Eastern Europe is about to be expanded.

As it happens, I was in Bratislava for the Slovakia match last year. But I didn’t take the now legendary FAI-chartered train to Zilina, where the hosts had transferred the match. Thus I can’t comment on the veracity of a strange story told to me afterwards by one of the passengers, still clearly worse-for-wear from the free bar that had also been provided.

For what it’s worth, he claimed that – after accidentally opening a compartment door marked “strictly private” – he had witnessed a card game between two men: one closely resembling Delaney, the other a saintly, bearded figure who looked like God. At the very moment he peered in, the Delaney-like figure had slammed an ace onto the table and shouted: “The passengers are all mine!” Whereupon my friend quietly closed the door again and snuck away, badly shaken.

Frankly, I don’t believe the story for a minute. I fear my informant’s judgment was damaged both by drinking and by listening to too many old Chris De Burgh records. But at the end of the Tuesday night’s game, when the FAI chief walked across the pitch to where the hardcore Irish fans had congregated, I wondered for a horrible moment if he was about to claim their mortgaged souls. Happily, he was only applauding them (and perhaps giving them an opportunity – if they felt so compelled – to applaud him back).

Anyway, qualification has now been achieved and soon supporters will be wrestling with the logistics of trains, planes, and automobiles. Financial meltdown or no, thousands of Irish fans will somehow make it to the finals: by road, Ryanair, Delaney Rail, or however. As for the team, we can only wish them well against Europe’s finest. It won’t be easy, but my hope is that Shay Given and his back four will find their individual dream doors between now and next June and, when they get to Poland and Ukraine, keep them locked at all times.