Come On You Boyz In Green... how I cut a football disc with Ronan!
SETS THE CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS
IT’S a little-known fact that Boyzone were paid their first professional fee for singing football chants on a song. Myself and my colleague Seán Devitt wrote a song for the 1994 World Cup in America. We brought them into STS Studios in Cecilia Street. As far as I recall we had Ronan Keating, Keith Duffy, Stephen Gately, Shane Lynch and Richard Rock, son of Dickie. These boys were being challenged vocally for the first time and we paid them 50 quid a man for singing…
‘I-R-E-L-A-N-D… that’s how we spell it, that’s how we yell it…’
And another one, ‘That old Jack Magic has us in its spell, that old Jack Magic that we know so well.’
And, as though it were a hymn, they chanted ‘Ooh. Ah. Paul McGrath.’
Just like the Republic of Ireland team on Wednesday Boyzone played a good game in the studio and as we all know they went off to be just like footballers, millionaires. Was I a soft touch or something?
Soccer chants are sometimes brutal in their callousness, sometimes vitriolic in their bitterness, sometimes malicious and sometimes plain old funny.
One of my favourite Irish football chants is: ‘He’s fast, he’s red just like Father Ted – Robbie Keane, Robbie Keane, Robbie Keane’.
But my favourite of them all was the Liverpool supporters’ chant directed at Luis Suarez, who played at Anfield between 2011 and 2014, and they sang it with gusto: ‘Your teeth are offside, your teeth are offside, your teeth are offside, Luis Suarez.’
When I was a lad I lived approximately halfway between Milltown and Ringsend. I wilfully supported Shamrock Rovers when they were going well and Shelbourne likewise.
But God doesn’t pay back his debts in money, and my duplicitous behaviour was paid for by the torment visited up me by Joey Wilson, a nippy Shelbourne winger, who would leave me gasping for air. A 60-year-old spectator cast a cold eye on me: ‘Hey, Shay… put a shilling in it.’
But years later, I finally got to pull on the green jersey in Lansdowne Road when an Irish team of musicians took on their British showbiz counterparts in a charity event.
THEY had Joe Elliott from Def Leppard and Ian Gillan from Deep Purple who was in goal for them. We had people like Dermot Morgan, Tom Dunne and a few stragglers like myself. The game was played as a supporting feature and the commentary was by Gerry Ryan.
We got a one-goal lead and it looked like it might not last as Joe Elliott bore down on goal. Muggins here had gone into goal due to the unavailability of enough wind to allow me to play outfield.
Elliott hit his shot which was heading for the inside of the near post and, like a panther, I dived to my right and pushed the ball around the corner.
I saved the day: a one-nil win over the Brits at any level is always welcome in these pastures.
One of the people I thought about in the wake of Wednesday’s match was fellow Sandymount man Ray Treacy.
One of his last great adventures was, just ahead of the 2002 World Cup, to fly to Japan with me where he showed various facilities that would be available to the Irish team, including hotels, stadiums and training grounds and that entails.
Ray managed to line up two limos and a rake of reporters and photographers to greet us as we entered the small town of Isumo in south-west Japan. It was a plain little place, God bless us.
I’ve written before about how the mayor threw a dinner for us after which they wheeled out the karaoke machine for the delegation officials in tow. The mayor sang, the deputy mayor sang and even the Shinto monk – also on board for the occasion – contributed.
When it came to our turn Ray looked at me, gave me the nod, and we burst into a duet of The Fields Of Athenry and blew the Japanese off the field.
On our way home again, who did we meet at Tokyo Airport but Mick McCarthy, who was on his way to Saipan… I often think that had we known Roy Keane was going to cut up rough, Ray would have insisted on accompanying McCarthy and filming it.
In the jubilation that followed our brilliant win over Italy this week it was refreshing to see Roy Keane and Martin O’Neill in a clinch that was almost romantic.
I wouldn’t have put a fiver on the team when it was announced but sometimes when everybody is focused on the same goal, the collective energy sweeps all before it, this is truly a team with a capital T. One for all, all for one. Once upon a time for Ireland it was ‘No Chance’. Now it’s ‘Bon Chance.’