Any Irish football fans born between the years 1902 and 2004 will have heard most of these classic Irish football cliches.
1. You wouldn't get that above in the Phoenix Park
Whenever anyone witnesses some incompetent play, someone will remark that you wouldn't see that "above in the Phoenix Park," the setting for all hypothetical amateur soccer matches played in Dublin ever. Recently on Newstalk, George Hook (not a noted football fan) alluded to a hypothetical Home Farm-Belvedere game "out in the Phoenix Park" even though Home Farm have their own pitch in Whitehall and Belvedere invariably play their home games at Fairview Park.
2. He let Overmars know he was there
Insisting that Ireland's victory over Holland in September 2001 was inevitable from the moment Roy Keane crudely crashed into Marc Overmars in the opening minute. Ignore the fact that in the 20 or so minutes following the tackle, Holland created numerous chances and should have been at least 1 - 0 up at half-time.
3. Gary Breen jokes
Most Irish supporters who recall Mick McCarthy's time as manager will enjoy referencing the name Gary Breen as often as possible. In fact, 'Gary Breen' is up there with Father Ted quotes as one of the most tiresomely over-referenced items in Irish popular culture. A common joke includes dropping his name in among the likes of Pele, Maradona and Messi in discussions about the greatest player of all time. Crucially, Breen's name also rhymes with 'submarine.'
4. Ireland were the first team to beat England in 1949
Every few years, an English paper will carry an article in which a suitably enraptured author rhapsodises about Hungary's 6 - 3 win over England in 1953 and will inevitably report, at one point in the article, that this was the first time England were defeated by a foreign country on home soil. This will quite understandably drive older Irish football supporters cracked and they will remind everyone around them, in a strident tone of voice, that Ireland were the first team to do this when they beat England in Goodison Park in 1949. The amazing stubbornness of English football writers in continually forgetting that Ireland beat them in 1949 baffles these supporters.
5. "Bloody 'ell, I hope our one ain't as long as theirs"
A quote which has been attributed to numerous players, Terry Mancini (below), Andy Townsend and Tony Cascarino being chief among them. Apparently, Ireland were playing abroad in some obscure location. As the band concluded their rendition of 'Amhrain na bhFiann', the player in question, clearly missing the fact that the players round about him (there had to be at least one Irish born lad nearby) had been singing the anthem, turned to his compadre on his right and uttered the above quote in a very pronounced Cockney accent.
6. It was a great advertisement for the League
A statement uttered whenever a televised League of Ireland game does not finish 0 - 0.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJZFPpsYQKc
7. It may have been the worst game ever in the history of the World Cup
Usually made by purist, self-deprecating Irish football fans, this has been said about at least three games Ireland have played in at World Cups. It is most often said about Ireland's 0 - 0 draw with Egypt in Italia 90, but also about Ireland's 0 - 0 draw with Norway in USA '94 (the latter match was so forgettable it is often even overlooked in contests to recall the most boring match of all time, something which can't be claimed about the Egypt game, though this is partly thanks to Eamon Dunphy). Dunphy even claimed in post-match analysis that Ireland's 1 - 1 draw with Germany in 2002 may well have been "one of the worst games in World Cup history." In truth, there have probably been loads of bad games in World Cup history and not all of them have involved Ireland.
8. Blaming the FAI for what went wrong in Saipan so one doesn’t have blame Keane or McCarthy
People who believed that McCarthy was a nice bloke who did a decent job and recognised that Roy Keane was a national icon who could not be impugned under any circumstances found a neat way to fudge the issue by settling on the easy scapegoat in the shape of the FAI. They generally blamed the FAI, and unfortunate figureheads like Brendon Menton and John Delaney, for the whole dispute out in Saipan, but always in a rather vague, unspecific sense. Given that no one has ever picked up the cudgels to defend the FAI in a pub conversation ever, this smart, faux-insightful and thoroughly non-divisive argument would generate unthinking murmurs of assent from everyone present.
9. We could have won it that year. We had a great team then.
Whenever Euro 92 is mentioned. The fact that Denmark eventually won the tournament has provoked a great deal of wistfulness and regret among Irish fans about the fact that we narrowly failed to qualify at the expense of Graham Taylor's probably inferior England side. The jammy Denmark had a lot in common with Ireland. For a start, both failed to qualify for Euro 92. But because that poxy war broke out in the Yugoslavia, and not, unfortunately, in England, they got to go and win the tournament in Sweden, as we assuredly would have done. This is most often referred to as the one we could have won despite the fact in Euro 88, an event we actually qualified for, Ireland were moments away from knocking the eventual winners, Holland, out and reaching the semi-finals.
10. They used to play out in Milltown, of course
Even non-Shamrock Rovers fans speak of the hoops' old ground at Milltown as if it were a sacred, almost holy place, a ground on a par with the Nou Camp or the San Siro or the Maracana. Louis Kilcoyne sold off Glenmalure Park to property developers in 1987.
11. These are no great shakes
A statement made by people who are too in thrall to the RTE soccer panel. Often said at half-time, about a team we didn't know a whole lot about beforehand, but about whom we had a certain measure of trepidation. Eamon Dunphy is particularly fond of this line, often saying it about patently good teams. It is a kind of Eureka moment that is usually uttered to prepare the ground for an attack on the Irish team for not going and winning the game.
