What's the hardest place in Dublin to get an appointment?
Walkinstown, of course. (Because they only do walk-ins there.)
Walkinstown is also renowned for the spontaneous public celebrations that occurred there after Ireland reached the quarter-finals of the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
You can watch five minutes of it here. God bless Daithí Ó hAirtnéada, who had the foresight to film it in those pre-mobile phone days.
It's hard to convey just how crazy the country went over the 1990 World Cup. It seems to have been one of those unique moments in social history where conditions are just right to bring about an unprecedented and unrepeatable phenomenon.
The Walkinstown celebration might be the most famous, but there were similar scenes all around the country.
I had little if any interest in the tournament as it began, but I was gripped with excitement as it went on. It was really contagious. As you can see from the video, there are as many women celebrating as men. Everybody got in on it.
I was an avid soccer fan (and player) for about five years after that, although my interest slowly diminished over the next five years or so. These days I don't follow any sport, although I sometimes feel mildly ashamed of this. I think it's good for people to play and follow sports. I wouldn't go as far as to say that everybody should, though. There are lots of other good things to do, after all.
But people who refer dismissively to "sports-ball" or "twenty-two men chasing a pig's bladder around a field" seem like unimaginative killjoys to me. You could apply such a reductive description to any activity human beings perform for its own sake-- which would leave us with a depressingly utilitarian existence. (Yes, I've made this argument often on this blog. Apologies to long-term readers.)
At the time, I didn't realize how unique Italia '90 (as it was termed) would remain. There has never been anything like it since. I was Ireland's first World Cup. We qualified again in 1994, with many of the same players, and actually beat Italy (who were eventually runners-up) in the first game, before getting knocked out in the second round by Holland.
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The uniqueness of Italia '90 in Ireland transcends sport. I've never known any national event like it, or even close. It has always remained my ideal of national togetherness, national consciousness. Perhaps because I didn't experience John Paul II's visit to Ireland, when a million people went to see him in the Phoenix Park. (Well, I actually did. I was there. But I was only a year old, so I wasn't taking much in.)
One of the things I like about this video is that Walkinstown is such an ordinary suburban sort of place. I firmly believe the suburbs have to be enchanted.
The early nineties in Ireland were a special time in themselves, actually. I've written a blog post about it here. (One of my many posts that got no comments.) It wasn't all good, of course-- the Church took a real hammering-- but it certainly had a distinctive character, and a certain excitement.
I talk about Italia '90 so much that someone bought me a badge of the Italia '90 logo, last Christmas. I wear it all the time. (At least, whenever I put that coat on.)
Italia 90 was certainly the most glorious time in my lived Irish experience. National unity, joy, Bill, Eamonn and John on the tv.....I find it hard to resist the occasional thought that for Ireland it was all slowly downhill from there, but maybe that's just my age....
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's just your age, I pretty much agree with you. I'm very impressed by something Mary Kenny said in Goodbye to Catholic Ireland; that the best time for a society is when new things are happening but tradition remains strong. I'm not claiming that's an absolute truth (for one thing, you could apply it to almost any period in one way or another), but I do think she's onto something.
DeleteLooking back, a lot of what I liked about that time was that there was still a strong Catholic and patriotic "glue" in society, even if it was very much a watered-down version of both. So something like Italia '90 was exciting and different but it was still drawing on a surviving tradition of...well, maybe "solidarity" is the best word. I think there has to be a fair amount of social trust for people to leap around celebrating like that, and be willing to make fools of themselves. Can't imagine it now, although I suppose there are still huge crowds for St. Patrick's Day.
I look at this compilation video occasionally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-8ZBXsBOE8
ReplyDeleteThe bit that moves me almost to tears is the auld fella at 3.37 weeping at O'Leary's spot-kick. Say he's 70; he was born in 1920, grew up in Dev's Ireland and so on. Amazing. Like a figure from mythology compared to today's Ireland.
I was in Genoa a few years ago and passed the stadium. It was poignant to contemplate the scene that brought such joy to Ireland, while also thinking that for the vast majority of the locals that match was utterly inconsequential! Such is life.....
Pure intravenous nostalgia hit alright!
DeleteVery interesting - and I hadn't realized this was happening.
ReplyDeleteAt the time, I was happy that Jack Charlton (who I used to believe was a relative - apparently not; but he came from only 2 miles away from my Dad, and Dad attended the same school as Bobby) was doing so well in managing Ireland.
The equivalent for England was probably the 2005 Ashes - which many informed commentators said was the best Test Match series of all time - and certainly the whole nation apparently got involved over the five matches through the summer.
I confess I'm a little surprised that you weren't a follower of one of the Irish sports like Hurling or Gaelic Football - that would seem to fit "the image"!
Bruce G Charlton
Ha ha! Yes, hurling and Gaelic football would definitely fit my image more...now! Unfortunately I was such a contrarian growing up that I didn't want anything to do with all the Irish stuff my family, community, and school celebrated. I liked English things! Partly to be the direct opposite of my environment, but also partly through a genuine Anglophilia that I've never lost.
DeleteOf course, when I got (much) older, I realized that there was nothing at all contrarian about being anti-nationalist and it was in fact the hegemonic philosophy. But I caught the very tail-end of nationalist Ireland, not even in Ireland but isolated pockets like my working class neighbourhood. Indeed, Italia '90 may have been the last hurrah (literally...maybe a good name for a book!)
Gaelic games are played on Sunday and even today, when I hear Gaelic games commentary, I'm back to my childhood home on a Sunday, Gaelic games on the TV, school the next morning, and the scent of bacon, cabbage and potatoes on the air...those foods can be lovely but sadly my parents tended to use so much salt they were awful...strange because my father was a fine cook otherwise.
Even now, as much as I approve of Gaelic games in principle, those associations are too much for me!
We all loved Jack Charlton, he was like the father of the nation for a few years.