History will record the event as a promotional do for Carlsberg, the venue as the roof of the Travelodge Hotel behind the Royal College of Surgeons in Lower Mercer Street in Dublin 2.
Dietmar 'Didi' Hamann was there, ostensibly to chat to some TV3 guys about Liverpool and their current form and whether will they win the League and blah, blah, blah...
But really he was here to do what Germans have done since time immemorial; to slot penalties. Goalkeepers are really just extras, hapless fall-guys, nameless stuntmen in the long running, net-bulging production that is the German footballer taking a penalty.
Despite never having been a goalkeeper and not having the rare pyschological properties to want to be one at any point in the future, I was asked to stand in goal for four penalties taken by the aforementined Hamann, long feted for his fearsome shot and his exotic Liverpudlian-German accent.
Shamefully, there was no module in the DCU Masters of Journalism course preparing one for this undertaking - yet another example of the cutbacks that are gutting our Third level system.
Hamann struck the first three penalties with the expected Teutonic precision. The settled opinion of everyone in the vicinity was that no goalkeeper in the world could have saved them, even if no one present decided to verbalise that opinion. I flailed with all the panache of a creative midfielder forced to stand in goal.
For that is what I was.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, I was known in some circles as the Pirlo of Ferefad. I was once complimented for eschewing any “needless running” on a football pitch, a trait I prided myself on. Indeed, I was often willing to forsake a certain amount of necessary running just so I didn’t fall into the trap of doing any needless running.
For the last one I was determined to stand tall. My impersonation of Bruce Grobbelaar's wobbly legs and my icy stare clearly intimidated the German. Spooked, Hamann blasted the ball high over the bar. I fully admit to not being an expert at geometry but then one didn’t have to be to comprehend that I ‘had this one covered’, effectively making it as good as a save.
Having a German international miss a penalty against you is a momentous event. First of all, I quickly realised that this officially made me a better goalkeeper than Peter Shilton. And David Seaman.
To be honest I had long suspected I was a better keeper than Seaman. But to learn I was also better than Peter Shilton was a definite confidence boost. Both had played the role of the clueless, disorientated goalie gormlessly gazing back at his recently rippled net to perfection in Turin 1990 and Wembley 1996. Alas, my competence and goalkeeping prowess prevented me following suit.
Unsurprisingly, Hamann couldn't look me in the eye after that one but I could tell from his body language that he was thinking
I would have scored that had the keeper not stood tall, moved in such a sprightly fashion and shown a technical proficiency beyond the likes of David Seaman and, dare I say it, Peter Shilton, both of whom saw all the penalties taken on them by German footballers hit the net, in the tournaments of Euro ‘96 and Italia ‘90 respectively.
There is such a rush of emotions when a former German international misses a penalty against you on a makeshift pitch on the roof of a Travelodge in Dublin 2.
I suppose I thought first and foremost of my family. I thought of all the great goalkeepers who had gone before me, many of whom never got to say a German missed one on them. I thought of all the kids out there and those recently passed on. I thought of the many Irish people scattered to the four corners of the globe. I thought of how happy Colm Meaney’s character in The Van would have been had he seen it. I thought of David Peace, and the sizeable advance he will get from Faber and Faber when he comes to write a book about it. (It will be called ‘The Penalty’ or ‘Still Travelling’ or something, I imagine).
Ultimately life goes on. Like a lot of players who win All-Irelands and find the experience to be anti-climactic, you realise that you still have to get up in the morning. One can’t walk around in a haze of self-congratulation forever.
When I got back to the office, I realised that the important thing was that I keep my feet on the ground. I'm just the same as all of you.
