YoG No. 8 – Great Days and Nights in Ireland – Cork City 1-1 Bayern Munich

Football is not a television programme. As those who attend League of Ireland matches are often heard to say. It’s not something you play as a kid and then head to the couch or pub for the rest of your life to experience. And you don’t need to deposit hundreds of pounds into Michael O’Leary’s bank account and the British Exchequer to experience it either. But let’s make something clear – there is no such thing as a “League of Ireland” fan. Just a football fan. From or with a connection to Ireland. The fact that he or she chooses – often in addition to the couch and pub arenas – to travel up the road, to the next county or cross-country to attend football is not something noteworthy. It’s normal. Or at least it is everywhere else and could be here. “Are you an English Premier League fan?”. Sounds daft, doesn’t it. So let’s drop that ludicrous term as well, shall we…we’re all football fans.

This series of posts aims at highlighting the magnificent experiences that people have had attending football matches in Ireland, mainly club matches. We far too often see the hype generated by the English game, and although less so in recent years, the Scottish game, and see our own as vastly inferior. It is. To the former. The latter debatable give or take 2 clubs. We also hear endless paeans to the wonder of the native games and all they have to offer in terms of atmosphere and (that word again) experience. And they’d be right. At least a dozen times a year anyway. But we hear little about the club football games. The legendary days and nights. Title deciders. Cup finals. But above all else, in my view at least, the days and nights where our League of Ireland boys put it up to the Contintentals. And won. Or almost won.

And we begin with  a match a 13-year old me watched with his jaw on the floor, in which German über-giants Bayern Munich came to Cork. Played on a weekday afternoon – I must’ve been mitchin’, we’d no half days on Wednesday – in Musgrave Park rugby ground, it may still be the greatest result ever by an Irish club. My own memory sees Dave Barry scoring a 30-yard screamer to give City the lead. Youtube doesn’t completely contradict me either. Although it didn’t break the net, it certainly was a great goal. But Bayern, who had a few lads with newly enough minted World Cup winners medals in their lockers – Thomas Berthold, Stefan Effenberg, Brazilian international Mazinho plus a young Christian Ziege, alongside a lot of established Bundesliga regulars, all managed by Jupp Heynckes – fought back to claim a 1-1 draw. With an away goal in the bag they won the 2nd leg 2-0.

But as some of the posts on People’s Republic of Cork show, this match will live long in the memory. And Bayern did well to get a draw, with Dave Barry again going close with a free, while Pat Morley may have got a peno on a better day. As for Stefan Effenberg – remember we “didn’t like” the Germans back then, not like now with the beguiling charm of Jurgen and Didi all over our tellys – it seems he was quite the ballbag saying he would score a goal for every part-timer on the pitch. Well he struggled that day, but got there to equalise in the first half.

While this was not a vintage Bayern side, despite being runners-up and European cup semi-finalists the previous season they’d go on to finish 10th in the league in 1991-92, and exited the UEFA Cup in the next round to Boldklubben 1903 of Denmark (yeh me neither), it still stands as a massive result for Cork City and for Irish Football. There had been similar results in the past, and more were to come. But for that one sunny afternoon, Cork City put it up to one of the biggest names in European football.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROhbjeSYX-A&feature=youtu.be

Dave Barry himself was of course a great Gaelic footballer as well with a couple of All-Irelands and 4 Munster titles to his name. He managed City for 5 years, which included an FAI Cup win. Today he is to be found as a voice of reason on Soccer Republic and covering live football for RTÉ. Fellow pundit Pat Morley was up front that day, alongside current manager John Caulfield. Noel O’Mahony was the Cork City manager. He died aged 73 in 2013, and was described by the Irish Examiner as the only man to have “created a sporting legend at Páirc Uí Rinn, Turner’s Cross and Musgrave Park.” He played for Cork Hibs at Páirc Uí Rinn, then called Flower Lodge, managed City to the title at Turner’s Cross and masterminded this result in Musgrave Park. A great Irish football man.

In writing this series of posts, I’m not afraid to dig around online to put a story together and perhaps weave back the loose threads of your personal recollections. There are a number of games that will spring readily to mind for readers, but please get in touch with some suggestions with comments below or on the facebook page. Particularly decisive league games – we’ve had a few down-to-the-wire classics in recent years alright, or indeed any under-rated or forgotten great international performances. All I’m interested in is the fact that it was a game of football, played in Ireland, by an Irish team. That you or someone like you, was there. And that it deserves to be thought about and written about just one more time to try and balance out the endless and ubiquitous coverage from foreign football and other sports. It’s about showing the uninitiated that they too can be a part of something like that in the clip above. You can say that “I was there”. And you can discover that incredible atmospheres and great football memories are out there to be found on your doorsteps. Because, as I said, Football is not a television programme.