THE DAY I PLAYED FOR IRELAND by Donal Kennedy

(Written following a Dublin visit in 1990 when the city first showed any interest in the World Cup.)

Published in the IRISH DEMOCRAT Dec 1990

I think it was Confucius who first remarked that when the Old Bill look young the observer is getting long in the tooth. Visiting Dublin recently I spotted a couple of Garda Superintendents. They looked mere striplings, gossoons who should have been in school, not abroad in the city at that time of day.

Then I remembered that most Dubliners are under 25 and weren’t even born when I left for England in 1964, and was startled to realise that I am twice the average age.

To most citizens then, anything before Colour TV belongs with the era of Fionn MacCumhal – when Ireland was peopled by Giants and Fairies, and winsome maidens lilted sweetly to the strumming of harps.So, before these eyes dim further, I think I should relate for posterity an unsung story from that heroic era – The Day I Played For Ireland.

It must have been about 1954. Certainly it was before Bill Haley and James Dean called into being the separatist generation of teenagers. Long trousers, not long hair, denoted the generation gap. And the most interesting thing about females was the peculiar design of their bikes.

A Troop of English Boy Scouts camped in a wood on the Hill of Howth. Where, from time immemorial, we had re-enacted the shoot-outs, massacres, scalpings, lynchings  and hoe-downs of the Wild West, planned depredations on the orchards of the neighbours and speculated on the botanical interests of  coortin’ couples in the surrounding ferns and rhodedendrons.

We were used to English people in Howth. Prosperous,retired folk. With Morris Minors and Austin A40s. Rose-growing Colonels – we had three in our road alone.They had fled the Attlee Government at war’s end, in what the wags called  The Retreat From Moscow. We also had, each Bank Holiday Weekend, refugees from industrial Lancashire. Taking the tram to the summit and on the way feasting their eyes over Ireland’s Eye and Lambay islands and way beyond to the Mournes.Filling their lungs with sea air. At the summit filling their bellies with real eggs, black pudding and beef unobtainable in rationed Britain. Together with a few quarts of Guinness or other beers. Then back on the tram down the South side of the Hill, with views of Dublin Bay, Dalkey Island,Bray Head and a succession of hills and promontories to Wicklow Head.

They were a generous lot, these Lancashire folk, and jolly with it. Though they only knew two tunes.  One was ”  I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside”. The other wasn’t.

But  these Scouts were a new species of English. They didn’t grow roses, drive Morris Minors or sup ale. And they hung a Union Jack from our Lynching Tree. When the humour was on them they sang ” On Ilkley Moor Bataat.”  When it wasn’t they sang ” Rule Britannia.” It was the first time I heard either ditty. And I liked “On Ilkley Moor” from the start.

They came from ” Ull”  which the maps and phone directories call “Kingston-Upon-Hull.” I’ve been to ‘ Ull  since, one January . The East wind, starting on skis in Siberia, scything the grasslands of the steppes, swept out of Russia without benefit of Glasnost or Perestroika, careered like a Panzer division across the North German Plain, took flight over the North Sea, and then  gave its undivided attention to ‘Ull. The British Post Office never provided the place with a telephone service, leaving the locals to provide one for themselves .Presumably  only those inured to the conditions could plant poles in the Tundra and wire them in the gales.

Anyhow, these Scouts out of ‘ Ull  were unlike any English folk of whom we had direct, wireless, film or literary experience. Most amazing was their way of speech, particularly their vocabulary. It wasn’t what we were used to from Bunter, Harry Wharton, or even Smithy – the Cad of the Remove. Nor was it the language  of William, Ginger, Douglas or Henry, nor that other Outlaw, Robin Hood. These fellows used words for anatomy and bodily functions we thought exclusive to our own underworld of North Dublin Gurriers.

So, warily at first, we got acquainted with these intruders, learned how to throw a Bowie knife so that the blade point, not the handle, hit the target. how to collapse and set up a tent, and sing “On Ilkley Moor Bataat”  around a log fire. It was like Christmas 1914 in the trenches. Except it was August.

And , of course, any thought of homicide was out of the question. Until the football match.

The wood was contagious to a Gaelic Football field, now called Pairc Ui Ruairc,but then known simply, to locals, as “The Tennis.” A Near Pavilion had once served Howth Lawn Tennis Club, which had long betaken itself a couple of miles to salubrious Sutton. Where Victorian and Edwardian ladies and gentlemen had played languid games of tennis, attired in gear to capsize a    battleship, we played cricket, baseball, – with a pickaxe handle “borrowed” from a Corporation watchman’s hut, football in all its guises, hurling, and more besides.Rules were elastic, indeed considered Bad Form. But that was amongst ourselves. We resolved that whether or not Britannia ruled the waves, or even walked on water, we would meet them fair and square on dry land according to their Own Sweet  FA Rules.

It was Five-a-Side. For the good reason that Our Gang, even with co-opted auxiliaries, never exceeded that strength. The goalposts at one end of the Gaelic pitch did their customary duty and a couple of jackets at the half-way line indicated the other goalmouth. When either side scored 3 goals  would be half-time. The first team to score six goals would be the winner. I was stuck in goal, as the consensus was that I was useless outfield, starting with the real goalposts. The kick-off was about 8.30 PM.

It wasn’t long until the visitors  had scored three to our two and I switched to the coated goalmouth. The visitors gained a quick fourth, but the Irish rallied with another three, which were followed by an English equaliser. Our lads were tiring and the English were becoming more surefooted and seemingly unstoppable as they made for my goal.

Now, I was as useless in goal as outfield, but necessity is the  mother of invention. We didn’t have floodlights and it was getting a bit dark. So, as the English made for my goalmouth I abandoned it – by strolling some fifteen feet to starboard. A Lineker of an Englishman sent the ball whizzing by my ear, and he and his mates went into a Mafeking of celebration that might have roused Baden-Powell from his grave. I strolled back to the Goalmouth, resuming my place as they prepared for a lap of honour. I asked was it the Queen’s Birthday, or had Her Majesty been delivered of another sprog. I couldn’t see what the song and dance was about when we’d a football match to finish. They had just failed to put the ball through an undefended goal.

When finally they realised I spoke the truth they were unamused and abandoned the game. It was too dark to continue the game and even floodlights could not have lifted their gloom. But we left the field with light hearts, We had not won the match but with honour and morale intact. And that’s the origin of the Irish proverb that says that a short stroll is better than a bad stand.