Wallace and co - Wex
Heaven on earth as Mick and friends lived
WATCHING THE Republic of Ireland at a World Cup must have been a dream come true for a football fanatic like Mick Wallace.
When you throw the fact that it was held in Italy into the mix, it was pretty much heaven on earth for the Wexford Youths founder.
His passion for all things Italian is only matched by his devotion to the ‘beautiful game’, so when he got the opportunity to blend his two great loves together it made for one hell of a ride.
Himself and a merry band of brothers, including the late Pat Whitty, Eddie Carroll, Eugene White, Joe Chapman, Lorcan Barden, Noel Stafford and Michael Stafford, certainly didn’t do things by halves, going to 16 games in total on a fun-filled World Cup journey in Italy.
‘There was eight of us going around in a white Hiace van. We drove up and down Italy twice and drove half way down a third time and back up again. There was actually eleven of us for a while,’ he said.
It was certainly a case of the Wexford Football League on tour as they pitted their wits against anyone that was willing to take them on, with plenty of success, although their pre-match routine was far from the norm.
‘We played soccer everywhere we went. We were all fit as fiddles, we were all playing Wexford League soccer at the time. We played some football out there.
‘We used to take on the locals. Every time we saw anyone with a ball we’d stop the van and ask them if they wanted a game.
‘When Ireland drew with Holland we had to race to Genoa to get tickets for the Romania game. We drove 900km in the van. They were starting to sell the tickets at something like six o’clock in the evening and we got there just in time and we all got tickets,’ he recalled.
‘We went on the beer after getting the tickets. A five-a-side competition started on the tarmacadam outside the stadium. We played football until five o’clock in the morning. Whatever team won stayed on the pitch. It was unbelievable, we had some night there,’ he said.
As a former construction firm owner, and now an MEP, some might imagine Wallace wining and dining his way around Italy, but it definitely wasn’t a five-star trip, more a rough and ready adventure, and you get the feeling he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
‘We went down to Palermo for the Egypt game and we stayed there, we were living on the beach. We had f**k all money, we weren’t staying in hotels or anything, we were sleeping rough the whole time. We brought two tents with us and sleeping bags,’ he said.
Wallace caught the football bug at an early age and, listening to him reminiscing about the first international he attended, Brazil’s 4-3 win over a Shamrock Rovers selection in Lansdowne Road in 1973, tells you all you need to know about his absolute adoration for the game.
‘There was a six foot fence to keep supporters off the pitch in Lansdowne at the time. I got over the fence, ran in on the pitch. I wanted to touch Rivelino, which I managed to do, and I didn’t wash my hands for about three months,’ he laughed.
The first Irish international he attended wasn’t a bad one either, the 3-0 win over the Soviet Union in Dalymount Park in 1974, with Don Givens bagging all three goals for the hosts and a fresh-faced Liam Brady making his debut.
‘Givens was on form that night and
Brady was amazing. He was either 18 or 19 with long hair, Jesus he was something else. He was a beautiful footballer, he really was.
‘I was at the Ireland-Turkey game in 1975 and we beat them 4-0 and Givens got all four goals. Giles was playing that time as well. Giles and Brady in the middle of the park. It was a great team,’ said the Independents 4 Change MEP.
And so a lifelong devotion to the Irish team had begun, supporting the Boys in Green through good times and bad, and having plenty of thrills and spills along the way.
‘From the late ‘ 70s on I went to all the games, home and away. There was about 20 years where I only missed about five matches in total and I was out of the country for them. I was working in Canada for two summers,’ he said.
As an Irish supporter, the zenith was in 1988 and 1990 when the team reached their first European Championship and then made their World Cup debut in quick succession, and Wallace agrees that it was a special time to be a disciple.
‘The Irish fans have been spoiled with praise over the years, but in ‘88 and ‘90, that’s when you had the best of the fans, lads with feck all money going. The people with more money got more interested in it when the thing got successful and a lot of the genuine fans used to struggle to get tickets after that. That was a problem as well, but it happens,’ he said.
‘Apart from the final, the hardest games to get tickets for are the group games because everybody can plan for them. You can’t plan for knockout, bar you say to yourself I’m going to the tournament and I don’t care where it’s on.
‘You don’t know where your team is going to end up, you don’t know if you’re going to qualify, whether you’re going to finish first or second. You don’t know what stadium you could be in for the second round or the quarter-final or semi.
‘The Irish that were out there in Italy, none of them wanted to go home. They were supposed to go home but loads of them rang home for more money, asking girlfriends, wives, mothers or fathers to get out loans from the Credit Union and everything.
‘Loads more came out as well then because the craic was so good. It was phenomenal the Irish that went that time. It’s just one of those few weeks in a lifetime that people would never forget,’ he said.
Starting with the Republic of Ireland’s opening game against England and continuing to shout encouragement from the stands as they faced Egypt, the Netherlands, Romania and finally Italy, Wallace enjoyed every second of Italia 90.
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‘The craic was so really something els for as long as I live.
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‘I’ll never forget ge final. They had annou 1,500 tickets for sale