““We heard they were coming but we never dreamed there’d be this many. The noise was magnificent,’’ said the Irish veteran defender Paul McGrath. ““It felt like a home game,’’ said World Cup rookie defenseman Phil Babb. McGrath, from Dublin, and Babb, from Lambeth in South London (his mother is Irish), are both black Irishmen and surely enough they looked like the Giants’ own Lawrence Taylor himself, the way they stalked New Jersey’s Meadowlands and went after Italy’s ponytailed goal-creator Roberto Baggio. That was enough to keep not only Baggio from scoring, but the rest of the Italian team as well.
When barely 12 minutes into the game Ray Houghton, all of 5-feet-7, 150 pounds, left-footed a deflected header over goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca’s bewildered countenance, the scoring was over. The 1-0 lead stood simply because every time Irish coach Jack Charlton’s lads got in trouble they back-passed to their 34-year-old goalie Packie Bonner – sometimes from as far up as midfield – who would pause . . . wait . . . look . . . wait some more and then unload a booming punt.
““You [the media] keep writing us off, but we keep beating people,’’ said Charlton, referring no doubt to pre-Cup victories over Germany and Holland. ““But my lads can play.’’ According to soccer purists, it’s just the way they play that seems so irritating: the long passes, the reluctance to press forward, the dependence on defense. As if any of that criticism mattered to Ireland’s frenzied fans who, just blessed with their most important World Cup victory ever, might have been tempted into excessive behavior. But not to worry. Four years ago at the last World Cup, after losing to Italy, the Irish fans poured into the streets of Rome, not to fight but to dance and celebrate with their rivals. This time, with an upset in hand, imagine the kegs of sweet revenge that flowed last Saturday in the Irish pubs of New York.
