It was like a boxer
IRELAND v NETHERLANDS DE BOER AND OTHERS INVOLVED RECALL FAMOUS 2001 GAME
IT was the longest day. A Beautiful Day, too. Fans drank pints at breakfast before Ireland’s players ate the Dutch for dinner. Dessert was U2’s concert in Slane.
By now you all know the story about Jason McAteer’s goal, Gary Kelly’s red card, Roy Keane’s tackle on Marc Overmars and then his infamous no-look handshake with Mick McCarthy.
So, it’s time to find out what happened afterwards, the party on the team bus to Slane, the mourning back in the Netherlands, and how the most famous photograph in Irish football went unseen for months.
The rest you remember. Given’s saves. Kelly’s torment. Duff’s coming of age. Keane’s brilliance. Finnan’s cross. McAteer’s goal.
You’ll recall the noise. “Stewards go to your end of match positions,”30,000 cheers reacting to that news.
The Ireland players who played that day have never been forgotten … the Dutch ones never forgiven. Twenty-two years on, after trips to the 2010 World Cup final, 2014 World Cup semi-final and Euro 2004 semis, they still grieve after Lansdowne.
“Very, very, very … very painful,” is Ronald de Boer’s recollection of that sunny afternoon, when even the weather Gods smiled on the Irish.
“You’ve got to remember what we were,” the former Dutch international continues, “one of the top three teams in Europe,
who quite frankly, should have been in the final (of Euro 2000), after missing two penalties in regulation time and three penalties in the shoot-out (in their semi-final defeat to Italy).
“Look back at the names from that era: Overmars, Kluivert, Cocu, Davids, Seedorf, van der Sar, van Nistelrooy. We were scandalously good. We played beautifully. We left a legacy. People enjoyed watching us.
Floored
“But that day in Dublin, knowing we needed to win to go to a World Cup, losing the way we did, that was unexpected. It was like being a boxer, floored by an uppercut, a shot you didn’t see coming, one you never got up off the canvas from. The hurt lasted for months.”
So did the recriminations. Just six years earlier, Louis van Gaal was the uncrowned king of Amsterdam, having led a youthful Ajax side, including de Boer, to the Champions League. From crown to clown.
De Boer isn’t a critic. But he remembers those who were, the pundits who took out pens to draw tactical lines on TV screens, highlighting where the Dutch coach had slipped up. Newspapers too were outraged.
“We finished the game with five strikers on the field,” remembers de Boer.
Which was about two, too many, as McCarthy countered that strategy by parking the double decker, never mind the bus, on the edge of the Ireland box.
“PubliclyVan Gaal was blamed, yes,” says de Boer. And you can see why as the coach clearly messed up, subbing off wingers Overmars and Bolo Zenden replacing them with Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Giovanni van Bronckhurst.
With that the shape of the team was gone. “Everything started happening centrally for us, which suited you guys,”says de Boer.
“But look, Van Gaal was a brave coach. Many times he tried things that worked. That day it didn’t. But that day was like no other.”
Johnny Fallon agrees. He became Ireland’s kitman the month after McCarthy became manager in 1996 and had lived through the playoff disappointments of Brussels and Bursa.
So he sensed a make-or-break element to this game long before match-day.
Little things jog the memory. Alex Ferguson was over for the match. There was a conversation where he was asked if he ever got nervous before a game of this magnitude.
“Nervous, no. Apprehensive, yes,” he replied.
“That was how our players were in the hotel,”says Fallon. (right) photographer Lorraine O’Sullivan
“There was tension all that week because we knew what was at stake.
“Everyone knew the Dutch were a brilliant side but I’m not messing here, no one in that squad thought they could lose to anyone.
“Mick expected a win. He always did. He’d a great team, then. Roy, Robbie, Duffer, Stan, Dunney, Shay, Kells, Killer, Hartey, Mattie Holland and Jason. I’m telling ya, if we’d played Brazil in a World Cup semi-final, those lads would have felt confident.”
Still, when it comes to selfbelief, the Dutch are world leaders. “You guys got lucky that day,”de Boer tells you with a laugh.
How?
“Well, I was couldn’t play.”
Self-respect was never an issue for him or any of his colleagues. But did they have any injured.
I regard for Ireland?
“For sure, yes. Van Gaal would never approach a match thinking it would be a walkover. The 2-2 game in Amsterdam to open the World Cup qualification campaign was a strong performance from you Irish.
Respect
“We had huge respect for you. Yes, we thought we’d win because we thought we would win against any team. But we were realists. We knew it would be physical, and we knew that