It won’t be enjoyable. None of it will. The 180 minutes plus injury time will be an ordeal for us to sit through. Saturday will be a particular brand of footballing nightmare. If you’re at home watching it, I recommend a drink. If you’re in the pub, several. Because Georgia owe us a beating. They really do. I said immediately when the fixtures came out that our campaign would be determined in no small measure by the game in Tbilisi – in that hulk of KGB-sponsored sporting expression of Soviet ideals formerly named after Vladimir Ilych Lenin. The independent state of Georgia may have experienced few great international football days and nights, but this ground has history and heritage. This is a lions’ den which once saw Liverpool – a mighty Liverpool – savaged 3-0 in front of 110,000 people in 1979. This was enough to see Dinamo into the European Cup quarter-final. The locals here have form.
And this form can take a sinister turn, as Brian Kerr’s Ireland found out in 2003 when Kevin Kilbane was struck by the blunt side of a pen-knife, Lee Carsley and Damien Duff hit by plastic bottles and Gary Breen by a ball-bearing. All this while Shay Given’s goal had glasses smashed against it. A hostile crowd, you might say.
We’ve been back just the once since, although we’ve fulfilled two away fixtures against them. The first was a 2-1 win in Mainz, Germany which was moved due to a recent war in Georgia itself. In better circumstances, a most valuable 3 points started us on the road to France with 2 Aiden McGeady crackers in September 2014. Overall our competitive record is as follows:
P7 W7 D0 L0 F12 A4
Sure that’s grand so. A 100% record, including all 3 away games. But every away game was won 2-1, and a last minute goal was needed in 2014. We’ve also scraped through some of the home games, with a still inexplicable penalty required in Croker to draw level late on, and a 79th minute winner following, both from Robbie Keane back in 2009. And the less said about Séamus Coleman’s fairly fortunate winning goal last October in Lansdowne the better! So we’ve rode our luck in our games against Georgia. But not only that, Georgia also did us an almighty favour by beating Scotland in the last campaign. So we’ve rode our luck even in games we’re not playing! Only in 1 of those 7 wins were we victorious by more than 1 goal, and that was 14 years ago. This will be a grind, and an absolutely dreadful 1 goal victory would be grabbed with both hands if offered now.
And then it’s Serbia at home. We’ve served up some pox in Lansdowne over recent years and have yet to put away any rivals under O’Neill. The mania of the German victory stands in stark, stark contrast to absolutely everything else. Including the Euro 2012 qualifiers up to now, Poland, Scotland, Austria, Sweden, Russia and Slovakia have all taken points from Lansdowne Road, some even took 3. Not only was the German victory our first over one of the big boys for over a decade, it’s also the only decent home victory of any sort in a qualifier since the Dutch came to town in 2001, unless you count the Welsh and Slovak teams that Staunton’s Ireland overcame in the Euro 2008 campaign, teams we didn’t regard as real rivals at the time! It’s been grim stuff which has me now questioning that recent season ticket renewal. I’m sure I’ll be questioning it further as I sit head in hands in Block 519 for a good chunk of Tuesday night.
So expect nothing. Have a good few nights of football though. It’s not about the performance. It never is. Only the results matter and I firmly believe this group is the most capable of delivery we’ve had in a long, long time. They delivered in Vienna and to a lesser extent in Belgrade. If we get 3 on Saturday, the momentum is maintained and could see us past Serbia as well. We could do with making Cardiff in October and games involving other teams irrelevant and 2 victories will do that, with 3 points at home to Moldova a given, also in October.
So YoG is extremely optimistic that we will get the results. But I won’t enjoy any of it! Which in itself is a wonderful and gloriously satisfying state for an Irish football fan.
A Yard of Grass 