Today marks the 30th anniversary of Ireland v England at Italia 90. In 2016, we wrote the following article on the halftime coverage of the game, which had recently been uploaded to youtube.
'Youtube's greatest public servant' killianm2 has dipped into his staggering, never-ending treasure trove of old recordings and pulled out the half-time analysis of the Ireland-England match from Italia 90.
Dunphy resumed his vendetta against the man he was alleged to have termed 'a boil on the arse of Irish football' in his examination of Gary Lineker's goal. Mick McCarthy, the bete noire of all pundits in the late 80s/early 90s (remember Brian Clough's dismissiveness in 1988), was pilloried for his positioning on the England goal.
The analysis proves an interesting counterpoint to the narrative that referees back in the old days not only gave Ireland nothing but actively conspired with the established nations to keep them down.
Dunphy said that the referee - Aron Schmidhuber from the home of our gallant allies in West Germany - had 'given us everything that he possibly could'.
Johnny Giles reckoned that Nottingham Forest full-back Gary Stevens was our ace in the hole. 'A poor player' was Giles's verdict.
There was still a feeling abroad that the plain people knew nothing about 'the game' back in 1990. Dunphy felt the need to define what 'ball watching' was at one point.
