Terrace Talk: Marching to Rooney's Looney Tooney

Last updated : 11 June 2003 By Dave Mervyn
According to Niall ‘flailing windmill off a cliff’ Quinn in Monday’s Irish Indo, ‘the bursting tremors of the Lansdowne Roar sprang back to life on Saturday’. A surmise which would suggest that Discopants’ eardrums were on the end of the Rosslare train, shunting under the West stand at the time of his scribing. Or indeed that Ireland’s record goal scorer had been the receiver of a looping back pass from Tom Humphries’ arse pocket in a ‘sardined’ press box.
Asked last October, what do you do immediately after a game, Quinn answered, ‘Have a Jacuzzi, beer and dream of being stuck in a lift (with Shania Twain)’. Man if I ever felt like a woman, it was Saturday being the only one in my row ‘proud?’ enough to hold up an A4 sized green piece of card as the teams entered the fray.

The former Sunderland striker, whose wall-shaking laugh is much missed at team get-togethers, went on to describe ‘giddy faces’ on the ‘streams of fans’ leaving the stadium. True? But were they just celebrating the win and bypassing the match? Well for the 30,000 stand ticket holders who didn’t sing a note for ninety minutes, they had to let loose somehow – and a smile probably came as due relief, for as our faithful foot soldiers of Premiership season past feigned another flat June performance, middle-Ireland, sojourned into shade-less stands, refused to budge for some pre-match ‘Block rockin’ beats’. So will there be a Genesis report into these ‘block-booking cheats’? I think not, they paint the walls of 80 Merrion Square.
What can be said is that it was an experiment, and one perhaps worth pursuing. The eircom League supporters, housed in the North terrace, put on a wonderful show of passion song and dance and they can hold their heads high (which is what they’re used too, especially if one’s team competes in the head-tennis, anything goes world of the First Division).

Critics may point to the good old days and perhaps they are right, atmospheres during the Charlton era at Lansdowne were miles better than the current home one – Ireland has changed and so too has its supporters, who on the evidence of recent seasons, are oft bigoted, can be swayed by what is written in the papers and are increasingly favouring professions such as architecture and computer programming. Where are the builders and mechanics of Italia ’90?
While the demographic of Ireland’s support has changed, the essence of their will for the team to win hasn’t. But shouldn’t we fans be able to put on a show directly derived from spontaneity? The best thing about being a fan is the bubbling bath of emotion lying between the terrace and the players. And when it erupts for a goal, no amount of planning and westernised razzamatazz can equal it.
It’s evident too when you look at the recent success of Croatia at France 1998, and the sporadic but nevertheless resonating wins of the eastern block countries against bigger international fish, that their stocks can rise and support build, while their economic and social structures may have left a lot to be desired.
The Charlton era united a nation that needed to look outward, and we did on a wonderful journey of ten years. We maybe tired of looking outward, heck we forever look inward now to the buttons of our mobile phone, but if Euro 2004 qualification is vital for the future of Brian Kerr’s career, it has seismic consequences for Fran’s futon-loving faithful.

A foul smell can out of the backside (not T Humphries’) of what was a World Cup performance to be built on last year, June 7th is something to build on…for both the team and its fans.
Brian the Greener – can he fix it? With a wedge of well-timed luck and Springsteen in the dressing room, Lansdowne should soon be ‘unrecognisable to itself’, once more.

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