The England performance wasn't that bad - and you were playing away from home - and you were like 11/10 to win the match before hand, so there was less than 50% chance prediction of a win anyway. One of my personal grievances with England fans is their bi-polar approach to supporting the team, yer either brilliant world beaters... or the whole team should be lined up and shot.
I watched Trainspotting for the first time in about ten years a few months back. Absolutely awesome, they didn't waste a single scene.
I'm happy with the 1-1 draw, that's two home points dropped by one of our rivals. Not happy with the ****ing Poles not shutting the roof yesterday as I missed most of today's re-arranged match. As I said this morning, the Poles are the Herald of Free Enterprise of international football.
I look at it like this... We should compare ourselves to similar sized countries who have a similar interest in the game. So that's: Germany Italy France Spain Argentina We get the odd victory against them but our record is pathetic in comparrison.
England's performances have worsened since the 1990 World Cup when we reached the semi-finals. Before that we had decent enough teams such as in 1982 when we played five games at the world cup and came home after winning three and drawing two. A nation our size, however, should have been expected to have won more than one world cup and at this present moment, we are miles away from winning another. In fact, the performance of the home nations countries, plus the ROI, has dipped significantly of late. Too many foreigners in the Premiership? Not enough good coaches? Not enough good players? Take yer pick.
But it wouldn't be 'in Ireland'. I just thought it might be one of those dodgy misleading stats you hear sometimes. What did you think of Trainspotting?
In 1990 we had a far superior side to what we've got now yet still we needed extra time in both games to overcome the might of Belgium and Cameroon. Didn't we also need to thrash Poland to get out of the group stage? Despite everything, I do think if we had the nerve to take penalties, we might have reached a few finals.
Poland was 1986. I was gonna add that we could do with a bit of luck sometimes with pens but I think you are right about having the nerve. Just maybe though, top countries have the know-how to win big matches. Anyway, we are still the only country in the world to have won both the football and rugby union world cups (and a cricket world cup thrown in as well) so a big ****off to the pisstakers and doom mongers. But we could and should have done better.
I'm perfectly happy with things as they are, we have a sniff of a trophy in just about every sport going but need to hit form and get some luck to come out on top. Makes for great viewing.
Plus the Olympics this summer were marvellous, not just as the host but also all those shiny medals we won. For once, people from other countries would have been casting a jealous eye at our achievements. And it ain't often that we've been able to say that
I mean participation by kids. The GAA is miles ahead. In my school you couldn't play football (soccer) unless you played GAA too and I'm in the north. Might have been different when the spring chicken Mick was there as I know they have also made the Irish language a choice in first year now whereas we had to learn it. Haven't watched it in years and it's still class, loved it.
