Some of these men are hated, all have been thorns in our side...
Dudu Aoaute
Possibly the most loathed individual ever to stagger – clutching his face – across the path of an Irish sports team.
We’re aware his name might still resonate with fanatical football fans, but to many others he is known that prick of an Israeli keeper – the man whose antics enraged the entire Irish nation one Saturday afternoon. The game remains one of the most frustrating and costly home draws Ireland have ever suffered, along with the 0-0 draw with Poland in 1991.
After going 2-0 up, Ireland were pegged back with two goals from set-pieces. They proceeded to pummel the Israelis for the rest of the ninety but Aouate, aided and abetted by the Greek referee succeeded in frustrating them.
The man also has a frankly excessive number of vowels in his surname.
The Austrian football team
There are bogey teams and there are bogey teams. Then there's Austria. For some reason, Ireland always seem to meet Austria in years when everything goes to pot. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Austria were fairly useless while we were qualifying for everything.
Then we played them twice in 1995, the year when Charlton's aged team collapsed in a heap. Ireland lost both games 3-1.
The Austrians are responsible for one of Ireland's most humiliating ever defeats - a 6-0 loss in Vienna in October 1971. Five months earlier, they were spanked 4-1 in Dublin.
Thierry Henry
Presumably there are some people in remote parts of the globe that don't know why Thierry Henry would feature in an article like this.
Henry copper-fastens his place here with his recent moan about how the media treated him following the handball.
Vincent Clerc
Vincent Clerc has scored 34 tries for France. It seemed like about 32 of those were against Ireland.
In the space of one year he managed to score six tries against Ireland - he nabbed the winning try at Croke Park in 2007, he ran in two second half tries as Ireland were dispatched 25-3 in the Rugby World Cup and he scored a first half hat-trick against the French early in 2008.
Stephen Jones
Approximately 80% of Irish rugby fans have been blocked by Stephen Jones on Twitter and the Sunday Times currently resides behind a paywall, so many Irish rugby supporters don't get to read him anymore.
He has a long and varied history of getting up Irish fans' noses.
Back in 2002, he described Ireland as ‘the smuggest rugby country’ following their 52-10 win over Graham Henry’s Wales. He said Ireland had failed to produce a truly great player in 150 years of rugby. In 2009, he excluded Brian O’Driscoll from his putative Lions team in favour of Tom Shanklin and Gavin Henson. And last week, he selected twice as many Italian players as Irish players in his Six Nations team of the tournament.
But one salient fact remains. Irish rugby fans continue to read him.
Maybe it’s time to admit the truth here. We all secretly love Stephen Jones’ jabs at Ireland. The only thing worse than Stephen Jones taking pot-shots at our rugby team is Stephen Jones praising our rugby team.
Raul Nazare
Eoin Hand ran onto the pitch afterwards and told him he'd got a bribe.
Ireland were a whisker away from qualifying for the 1982 World Cup in Spain. They were drawn in an astonishingly tough group with France, Holland, Belgium, and, the only whipping boys, Cyprus. However, Ireland, with Brady and Stapleton and Lawrenson all at their peak, beat both France and Holland in Dublin, and pushed the Dutch (finalists in the previous two World Cups) into 4th place in the group.
Earlier in the game, he had ruled out a perfectly good Frank Stapleton for an offence which no one seemed to spot. including the man himself, who was interviewed for the Sunday Tribune by Paul Howard a decade ago.
Then, in the final moments, Eric Gerets, threw himself to the ground just outside the box in what has to rank as one of the most ludicrously obvious dives ever seen on a football pitch. As a crossfield ball was launched towards the penalty area, Gerets sprinted toward the box and as he ran past the more or less stationery Steve Heighway, comically launched himself into the air like someone who had been fired out of a canon and flopped onto the ground with his arms stretched out in front of him on the edge of the box. In a decision so inexplicable as to be sinister, the referee Nazare adjudged that Heighway had fouled him and awarded the free.
The ball hit the crossbar and looped agonisingly into the air and Ceulemans headed home in the ensuing scramble.
The guy in the crowd with the whistle at the Ireland-Croatia game of 2012
I don't want to mince words here.
That guy (or woman) who was blowing the whistle during the Ireland-Croatia game is the worst person on the face of the planet. If he is indeed Croation, then the Irish government should immediately seek his extradition to this country so he can face justice.
He was responsible for somewhere in the region of forty percent of Irish supporters reacting to the only Irish goal and practically the only good moment of Euro 2012 by saying, 'No, no, it's ruled out. It's not going to count.'
A truly contemptible individual.
The FIFA official who wouldn't let John Aldridge on the pitch in USA 94
A pedantic and preposterous jobsworth who snapped the substitution slip out of Charlie O'Leary's hand. The best moment here is the genuine fear he seemed to exhibit when Aldo started screaming at him.
After being bawled out of it by Aldo, the petty official went and had it out with Charlton, eventually pushing the old boy out of frustration.
Neil Back
A gruff, unsentimental and commonsensical Peter Clohessy said later on that had 'one of our guys done what Neil Back did, we'd be clapping him on the back'. This is true. But - and this a crucial detail - a Munster player didn't do what Back did. It was the final nail in Munster's coffin in the 2002 Heineken Cup Final.
Despite the undoubted fact that many in this country have certain sneaking regard for Back's cuteness, any attempt to exclude him from this gallery of rogues would have been met with howls of protests - or at least a few negative comments of facebook.
