That famous Mickey kind of expected it,

IRISH GUNNERS RECALL 1989 FINAL-DAY HEROICS TITLE

THE season was on the line. Martin Tyler was calling it for Sky Sports and the man sitting beside him went to say a few words but then stopped.

Later, his Sky producer would compliment him for doing so, for possessing the humility as well as the sense to know when it was a time to talk and when it was a time to shut up.

He did that bit pretty well, seeing how everyone else in the stadium that afternoon had raised their voice to the highest level, including the man he was working alongside. “... AGUER ... O ... OOOOOO,” screamed Tyler, going a little nuts, before adding, “I swear you will never see anything like this ever again.”

At that stage Niall Quinn, Tyler’s co-commentator, felt like intervening. Because he had seen something exactly like this before. That time he was even closer to the action, sitting among the Arsenal substitutes in Anfield’s Main Stand.

It was a Friday evening in May, the sun setting over Anfield, a tragic season drawing to a close. Liverpool, as a city and a club, was in mourning, 96 lives lost at Hillsborough just over a month earlier, in April 1989. In this context, a football game seemed irrelevant.

Dream

But football never is.

It draws people in, keeps memories alive, soothes broken hearts, makes people dream.

On this night it was Arsenal who were dreaming. Their team was a mix of youth team graduates and signings from smaller clubs, hungry players moulded together by aan ambitious, young manager who had steadily rebuilt the team in his own image.

Sound familiar? Well, it should, because this weekend seems like a sequel not just to 1989 but also 2012, the two most dramatic conclusions to the League in English football history. Again it is Arsenal and Manchester City involved. Again Arsenal are massive underdogs.

But that anything.

“At that club you are taught to never give up.”

Those are the words of Pat Dolan. He watched the 1989 game alone in a flat in Walsall.

By this stage his Arsenal dream was over and he’d been shouldn’t mean

THE LATE LATE SHOW: Arsenal celebrate after winning the First Division Championship with a 2-0 victory over Liverpool at Anfield in Liverpool on May 26th, 1989. Back row (left-right): Ian Allinson, Gary Lewin, Alan Miller, Steve Morrow, Niall Quinn, Alan Smith, Brian Marwood, Nigel Winterburn, Perry Groves, John Lukic, Kevin Campbell, David O’Leary. Front row: Paul Davis, Kevin Richardson, Michael Thomas, Martin Hayes, David Rocastle, Lee

Dixon and Theo Foley shifted down the leagues. He may have left Arsenal but the club never left him.“It’s in you,” Dolan says.“Always will be.”

Partly that was because of its culture, the marble halls they used to have at Highbury, the lessons they used to teach their players.

Standards

“This is The Arsenal,” Pat Rice regularly told them. “That has to mean something.”

To Dolan it meant reaching and then maintaining certain standards. Playing to the death was one of those.

“Wearing the colours — those red shirts and white sleeves — with pride was another. Later as manager of St Pat’s, I introduced white sleeves to our kit. That was The Arsenal in me. The club is always part of you.”

Pat Scully knows what he means. Capped by Ireland in 1989, Scully was a reserve team player at Arsenal that same year. He didn’t get on the bus to go to Anfield that night.

“Ultimately I wasn’t good enough,” he says. “But the club was unique. They had principles for you to uphold. Work hard, be honest, be the best you can be. Fight to the end.

“Mickey Thomas scoring a last minute winner to win the League, that might have surprised the football world, but it surprised nobody at Arsenal.

“Because that’s what we were all about. Try your best. And if you fail, then try harder the next time and fail better.

“My parents brought me up to be polite to people, to be on time, to have a work ethic. As a teenager, a few clubs were looking for me. But when I went to Arsenal, that felt right. It felt like home from home.”

Partly that is because Arsenal was known as English football’s Irish club.

Quinn was there, David O’Leary too, Dubliner Theo Foley was George Graham’s right-hand man and Rice a link in the chain from the 1971 double winning side through to the era of Arsene Wenger.

Network

But the Irish aspect of the club went beyond players and coaches.

“There was a network of Irish people around London who looked out for you,” says John Devine, who was one of seven Irish players on Arsenal’s 12man FA Cup final squad in 1980.

“Irish apprentices would stay in digs with Irish families. Our solicitors would be Irish. We looked out for each other.”

That hadn’t changed by 1989, even if the number of Irish first teamers had dipped from seven to two. Thomas, the hero of Anfield, was an England international but his affinity with Ireland stemmed from his time at Highbury.

That point became clear to Dessie Byrne, a former lower league footballer, who signed for Wimbledon in 2000.

Thomas also signed for the Dons that summer. “Are you Irish?” he asked Byrne, recognising the accent, smiling shyly. “You’ll do for me.”

Little did they know then that Byrne’s advisor, the man who’d cut the deal, was also the man who used to sit beside Thomas