Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
On TV to my a few weeks
England with two minutes to go. (Szilard) Nemeth, who went to Middlesbrough, played for RCS.
“Nobody knows who or what RCS is now.
“It just goes to show. The world changes so fast. Jamie Carragher and Emile Heskey were on that England team, Jesper Gronkjaer on the Danish side that made the
nal. Turkey beat them. They had a great team.”
So had Ireland. He remembers looking around the dressing room.
“We felt we could take on anyone,”he says.“there was steel, there was quality. Dessie
Baker was on that team,
Simon Webb. They, as well as Hawks, went on to win
League of Ireland titles.
“We thought we’d do well; we knew England would be tough, and they were.
“But we genuinely felt we could qualify out of our group. It wasn’t to be.
Portugal, our third opponent, had a swagger about them. They beat us 3-0 and the football they played was outstanding.”
It was a high point but also a low one in his career.
He’d go on to have better days, and nishing third in the world in 1997 was the best of them, but also, at club level, he was part of a Longford Town team that won the club’s three major trophies.
St Pat’s came next. His credentials as a top League of Ireland player are highly considered.
But those weeks in April 1994 were where it started. “Think about it; you are a 16-year-old, allowed out of school to go and stay in
Dublin and prepare for a tournament against the best players of your age in Europe.
“Like the England lads were all with big clubs, Carragher at Liverpool,
Heskey at Leicester, two of them at Manchester
United. I was at Johnville.
“The rest of the lads at their local clubs.
“Suddenly we were going from training twice a week, to being at it full-time, staying in a hotel, playing matches live on TV. I was 16, remember.
“When we got knocked out, I was back at school, and sat my Leaving Cert within a month.
“Then I was off to Aston Villa. It was a rollercoaster of emotions.”
But within a week all the hope, dreams, were gone.
“We were sad when it was over,” Kirby says.
Little did he know but his new life was just about to begin.