Ireland v Argentina
I will be at the match this weekend. I might as well be miserable in Paris as at home.
Anyway, there is one big reason why the Irish team needs to win this match. It’s not for the years of effort, planning, hope that has gone into this World Cup. Not for the players or the coach. Not for pride or advertising contracts or the chance to etch themselves into legend.
It’s because, if we get knocked out, there will be a lot of Irish fans whose big trip to Cardiff next weekend will become a total fool’s errand. Who bought tickets for the quarter final months ago; who spent hundreds on a flight via Bristol; who have a B&B booked in some backwater mining village miles from Cardiff because all the hotels are already booked out by the Irish fans who had booked this trip two years ago.
Do it for them.
If things aren’t going our way by half time Eddie should bring Twink in to do the team talk.
Comment by Brock Landers | September 28, 2007 at 9:14 pmBefore the tournament I would have criticised those people for assuming we’d only finish second, no confidence or ambition in our team’s ability, how France are very beatable, etc.
Now, of course, those people look to have been wildly optimistic
Comment by aidan | September 30, 2007 at 10:49 amI’m so disappointed in Ireland’s performance at the World Cup. How anyone could be optimistic about our chances when so many players didn’t reach anywhere near their potential in the earlier matches. The coaching staff are either incompetent or full of hubris not to put a team on the park with any sort of coherent plan for each opponent.
Comment by Patrick Purcell | October 1, 2007 at 8:35 amI’m also sorry to say that some of the erstwhile stalwarts have passes their Use-By date and should be put out to pasture ( or Stud!).
What a hugely missed opportunity to blood new talent. Ah well, like the supporters of old, we live in hope!
Aidan/Patrick - I think it was over for most supporters after last week and they seemed to resigned to defeat before the match on Sunday, but I was really proud of the way they never turned on the team and in fact were still singing five minutes from the end when we knew it was a lost cause. A sense, perhaps, that they’d brought us good days in the past and that we shouldn’t forget that.
Comment by Shane | October 2, 2007 at 2:28 pm