It’s hard to believe that no one died in the heat at USA ’94
WHEN you see the number of tracksuits and staff on and around the benches in top-level football today, it’s absurd. There were times in the early days when the only people who got off our team bus were the lads, me, Maurice Setters, Mick Byrne and Charlie O’Leary. Nowadays, there’s more staff than players.
We certainly didn’t have dieticians, sports scientists, doctors, masseurs, boot polishers, you name it. I presume the clubs and international teams want all these people on match days now because they want the very best preparations.
No player today should have excuses if they play badly. I’m sure they will still have them. But some days, you’re just crap and you have to admit it.
UEFA and FIFA, love all this modern, new science, forward-thinking stuff. They want to do everything they can now to protect the players, make the game safer and, let’s be honest, prevent tragedies on the pitch. Funny then they were not so sympathetic towards myself and Ireland when we tried to protect our players in the 1994 World Cup Finals. Can you imagine how they would react now to the idea of a bunch of Irishmen playing in the baking hot 120° temperatures against Mexico in Orlando?
I repeatedly tried to tell them the way they were treating the players was wrong but no one, particularly in FIFA was prepared to listen. In fact they got so sick of me, they punished me in the end.
Every time I did a press conference, I mentioned my concerns about getting water to the players during some potentially horrific temperatures. Even FIFA’s own literature before the competition had warned players could go into a coma and might not recover if they were not properly rehydrated. We got a letter. It was pretty alarming stuff and we took it seriously.
But even in the pre-tournament friendlies in the States, referees were refusing to allow water to be thrown on to the pitch. And that worried me before we’d even kicked a ball.
Then in our opening game against Italy, sure enough, with temperatures in New Jersey in the 90s, the referee wouldn’t let us get water to the lads. I was absolutely furious.
What made it worse was that we lost Tommy Coyne (below) as a result of FIFA’s incompetence. He was picked out to give the urine sample but after running himself into the ground against the Italians, he couldn’t. So they gave him an endless supply of water, flooded his kidney and he became very ill. The icing on the cake came the next day. I went to watch Norway v Mexico in Washington and sat in the coolness of the VIP box. The former FIFA president Joao Havelange was sat in front of me, but didn’t even acknowledge me. He was probably sick listening to me. We sat in a shaded area of the stands, of course. There was air conditioning, we were given enough bottles of waterand then, just before the game kicked off, a girl brought us iced towels. Meanwhile down there on the pitch, the poor players were expected to perform in ridiculous temperatures with no rehydration. So I was already fuming when we got to the Mexico match, although we’d got a little concession from FIFA and permission to get water to the players as the game was going on.
The reality was very different, of course. When we tried to get water to the players during the game, we were all banished from the pitch. Ray Houghton even got booked for carrying a bottle of water!
I ended up in a furious row by the pitch with some FIFA jobsworth, and with a touchline ban, a fine I never paid and a seat in the press box for the Norway game. It’s a miracle no one died or, at least, collapsed that day.
It was horrendous. Stan Staunton couldn’t stand up in the team photo and Dennis Irwin was struggling from the start, too. The USA tournament was tough for me. I’ve lost count of the number of people who told me they had one of the greatest parties of their lives on the night we beat Italy. I didn’t. I stayed in New Jersey to catch a flight to that game in Washington and missed the celebrations.
But what a game it was. Giants Stadium. What a venue. What a crowd. Ireland fans outnumbered the Italians by three-to-one. Ray Houghton scored after 11 minutes, John Sheridan hit the bar and we saw the game out, beating Italy for the first time.
In any other stadium, on any other day, in any other temperatures, we would have beaten Mexico, too. But of course the conditions played into their hands. Then of course we had the fun and games between John Aldridge and the little FIFA fellow with the yellow hat.
Because he couldn’t pronounce Aldo’s name right down the phone to make his substitution all official, we had 10 men on the pitch for four or five minutes.
John, as we all know, lost his rag just a little bit and was still shouting and swearing as he ran on. It did work out for us in the end though because he scored for us. We did ok in New York against Norway, got the draw we needed and got through to the knockouts, which was the main goal.
Holland, unfortunately, were just too good for us in Orlando but it didn’t help giving two goals away to them. Terry Phelan made a silly mistake for the first, Packie Bonner made an uncharacteristic one for the second.
We had under-achieved really. I wasn’t the only one who had reservations about another homecoming party in Dublin on our return. It felt more awkward than the others we’d had because, deep down, other than the Italy win, I knew we didn’t achieve a great deal.
It was not a party for adults, it was a party for kids and for the fans who had been back home in Ireland. They had a good day out, I suppose. It was always about them, which is why I insisted we attend.