Josimar’s goal was NOT a chip! I’d have needed wings to reach that, says Jennings
As Northern Ireland strive for a first World Cup in 32 years, the 80s heroes relive their glory days
PAT JENNINGS can still picture it now, Josimar’s rocket arrowing over his head, dipping and swerving at high altitude in Guadalajara on its way into the top corner of the net.
‘If I had wings, I wouldn’t have got to that,’ says Jennings, casting his mind back to June 12, 1986. ‘Years later, a young chap at a Q&A asked me how I felt when I was chipped by Josimar. I said, “Son, your idea of a chip and mine are very different!” ’
The 3-0 defeat by Brazil was to be Jennings’s farewell game on his 41st birthday. It was also Northern Ireland’s last appearance at a World Cup; an absence of more than 30 years that they hope to end by winning a play-off against Switzerland, starting with tomorrow’s first leg at Windsor Park.
For now, it remains the golden age of Northern Irish football, those sun-kissed days when Billy Bingham’s boys reached back-toback finals — Spain 82 and Mexico 86. It made legends of them all.
Yet the journey began with Bingham making one of the boldest calls of his career. He decided to leave out 36-year-old George Best, a fading genius, and select Norman Whiteside, a 17-year-old at Manchester United.
‘It was a huge gamble,’ says 1982 hero Gerry Armstrong. ‘ We thought George had a chance of coming. It would have been great to see him come off the bench and scare the life out of the opposition.’
Jennings made his international debut alongside Best against Wales in 1964. The goalkeeper went on to win a record 119 caps, Best just 37. ‘Whenever I think of my mate George, my one sorrow is that he never played in 1982 or 1986, even for half an hour,’ says Jennings. ‘There was no way he would have let us down.’
Bingham took his players on a training camp to Brighton. It was not the obvious place to prepare for Spain in mid-summer.
‘England and Scotland went to the US and we got Brighton,’ recalls Jimmy Nicholl, the former Manchester United defender and now assistant to Northern Ireland boss Michael O’Neill. ‘Billy was the luckiest man in the world because it was the hottest summer for a long time.’
Bingham hired a marathon runner from Brighton University to get his players in shape. Only Armstrong could keep up with him.
However, consecutive Group 5 draws against Yugoslavia and Honduras meant Northern Ireland needed to beat Spain or secure at least a 2-2 draw with the hosts to progress to the second stage.
On a day off in the build-up, Bingham was invited to a factory that produced replica World Cup trophies, and gave his players permission to enjoy a few beers around the hotel pool.
Winger Billy Hamilton recalls: ‘Tommy Cassidy, who wasn’t the fittest player and had a wee bit of a paunchy belly, fell asleep on a lounger. The lads put a cowboy hat on him and got all the tins and bottles everybody had drunk — there were about 40 of them — and piled them next to his feet.
‘The Spanish press walked in and saw Tommy lying there with all these cans and a cowboy hat on. They took a picture and the next day the papers said, “This is how Northern Ireland prepare for big games!” We got an image in 1982 that we weren’t taking it seriously, but we were very fit.’
It was a false image but after Bingham’s side pulled off the greatest result in the country’s history, midfielder Martin O’Neill could not resist telling the media: ‘Imagine what we’d have been like if we were sober!’
A sweltering Friday night in Valencia is written into Northern Ireland folklore. ‘It was red hot all tournament, but the heat there was incredible,’ says Jennings. ‘The boys couldn’t put their shirts on before they went out. Some of them lost 10lb that night.’
Two minutes after half-time, Spain goalkeeper Luis Arconada palmed Hamilton’s cross out to Armstrong, who scored the greatest goal of his life, and Northern Ireland held on despite having Mal Donaghy sent off.
Armstrong settled in Spain later and still has a framed photo of the goal on the wall of his bar in Majorca. ‘It’s surreal,’ he says. ‘I
can still see it happening. Sometimes fate sets it out for you and I was there at the right time.’
The 63-year- old describes how the next morning there were more than 300 telegrams on the wall of the team hotel, including a message from Ian Paisley, one from the Catholic Bishop of Omagh and another from Charles Haughey, the Irish Taoiseach in Dublin.
‘We heard Catholics and Protestants were celebrating in the streets of Belfast and realised we’d done d something special,’ says Armstrong. ‘It wasn’t a good time in n Northern Ireland, but we did s something the politicians couldn’t a and united the country.’
After the game, Armstrong and Cassidy were selected for dope testing while the rest of the playe ers waited on the team bus.
‘They were so dehydrated they c couldn’t pass any urine,’ says Hamilton. ‘They were drinking beer and champagne in the testing n room and came out a little w worse for wear. We wouldn’t leave them behind, though. There’s a bond between those players that prevails to this day.’
Nicholl remembers the players heading to Suso’s nightclub in Valencia after a champagne reception. ‘No one expected us to beat Spain with 10 men,’ he says. Some had packed their bags for home, while the Irish FA hadn’t thought of booking a hotel for the second group stage. ‘They had to scratch around for a hotel in Madrid,’ says Nicholl. ‘It wasn’t great.’
Following a 2-2 draw with Austria, Northern Ireland went out 4-1 to France after O’Neill had a legitimate goal disallowed for offside.
‘If that goal had been allowed to stand, it would have changed things,’ says Jennings.
‘That was the moment,’ adds Nicholl. ‘That French team — Michel Platini, Jean Tigana, Dominique Rocheteau — woke up to what was nearly happening.’
If Spain 82 will always hold happy memories for Northern Ireland, Mexico four years later was a difficult tournament for an ageing team. ‘I found it embarrassing,’ says Nicholl. ‘I can be proud of 1982. I never really talk about 1986. You wanted to contribute a lot more and we let people down.’
Jennings, then in his 40s, had returned to Spurs as a favour to boss Peter Shreeves. He played only a handful of reserve-team games going into the World Cup while earning extra money doing promotional work for a friend.
‘I was making more appearances in supermarkets than on the pitch,’ says Jennings, who is now a grassroots football ambassador for McDonald’s. Bingham took his players to Albuquerque to acclimatise. They ran so high up mountains that some had nosebleeds.
The death of Sammy McIlroy’s mother shortly after Northern Ireland arrived in Mexico forced their captain to return home briefly. ‘It left an emotional scar,’ says Hamilton. ‘He was our captain and everyone felt for him.’
Bingham asked Nicholl and Whiteside to console the skipper. Nicholl is angry that a 2014 film,
depicted this as a booze-up.
‘It made out we were all wearing sombreros and downing tequila. That’s b******s,’ he says. ‘It was a sad moment. Me and Norman took Sammy over the road to a hotel and it was just the three of us having a beer. Sammy let it all out. You just didn’t know what to say.’
Northern Ireland were up against it after an opening 1-1 draw with Algeria, leaving Bingham’s side with it all to do against Spain and Brazil. They were on the brink of elimination after the Spaniards avenged their defeat four years earlier by winning 2-1. ‘We put pressure on teams but that type of game wasn’t possible at altitude,’ says Hamilton, who runs a trophy and engraving shop in Bangor.
‘We were exposed quite badly. We couldn’t get near players and we were physically shattered. A lot of us were a bit long in the tooth. We didn’t cover ourselves in glory.’
For Nicholl, the defeat by Brazil in Guadalajara was a humbling experience. ‘We were seasoned pros but they were on a different level altogether,’ he says. ‘I got Zico’s jersey. That was the only good thing that came out of it.’
Jennings treasures the memory, however, despite conceding three goals including that Josimar strike. ‘After 119 games, to finish against Brazil on my birthday, I couldn’t have written the script,’ he says. ‘It was a dream.’