One night in November, 1993…
I WAS SITTING on the Republic of Ireland team coach as it wound its way through Belfast when the fear hit me. Similarly, it was completely silent and it was dark, about 7pm in the evening. The bus snaked past mean, red-bricked streets. Dank, claustrophobic housing. Tribal colours fluttering menacingly, illuminated by streetlight. Hostility. Under Jack Charlton’s management, the Irish team coach was not usually quiet; there’d be some come-all-ye folk ballad blaring and plenty of craic between the players. But on this occasion, uniquely, the reason for having the lights and sound off was security.
We were travelling to play Northern Ireland in our final qualifying match in the World Cup campaign, a make-or-break game which would decide whether or not we would be travelling to America the following summer to compete in the World Cup finals. We knew that we had to win to ensure qualification. If Spain beat European champions Denmark in Seville, a draw would be enough for us to get through. Northern Ireland had failed to qualify. One thing was certain, though: they could still stop us from going through if they managed to beat us the following evening.
With such high stakes, not to mention the hand of Irish history, the atmosphere was sure to be charged. But there was an extra edge. The match was taking place after a spate of Troubles killings. Three weeks previously, two IRA men had entered a fish and chip shop on Belfast’s Shankill Road, intending to leave a bomb for a group of loyalist paramilitaries meeting upstairs. It exploded prematurely, blowing the bomber and nine other people in the chip shop to smithereens. Loyalist paramilitaries responded a week later, carrying out a wanton shooting at a pub in County Derry, killing eight. I remembered the news bulletin, which claimed that one of the gunmen had shouted ‘trick or treat?’ as he opened fire. Although I was playing my club football in England, the horror of the Troubles was only ever a newsreel away.
Tit for tat. 9-8? The grim tallies of the dead in both atrocities were close enough to seem like some sort of grotesque football score. The footballing authorities, understandably, were starting to become unnerved. There was talk of postponing the match, or playing it elsewhere — in Wembley or even in Rome. Then it was decided that the match would go ahead, as scheduled, at Windsor Park, Belfast. For security reasons we were instructed to fly the short distance back from Belfast to Dublin, which did little for everyone’s nerves and wound Jack Charlton up no end.
(Alan McLoughlin celebrates his role in helping Ireland qualify for the 1994 World Cup)
When the players were consulted we were all very brazen 12 about actually playing the match; everyone had the attitude of ‘let’s just do it’, and yet at the back of all our minds was creeping worry. Would athletes be targeted? Ha, ha! No way. Surely not. Shrug off the fear, lads, and move on.
However, in the days before the game someone mentioned the 1972 Olympics, when members of the Israeli Olympic team had been gunned down by the Palestinian group Black September. There was that momentary, stomach-tightening fear again. So, as the coach passed through the tight Belfast streets, past the red, white and blue kerb-stones and triumphal murals of King Billy on his horse, minds were racing with anxiety. Sitting in darkness, everyone was silent. I looked up and down the coach to the two special branch men, disguised in Football Association of Ireland tracksuits to blend in with us players. Even they seemed to be stroking their guns nervously.
As the coach drew up outside Windsor Park stadium, the escort of armoured cars started to pull away. I looked out of the window, first to the police helicopter still whirring noisily overhead and then to a set of five-a-side pitches illuminated by floodlights. I thought it was odd that they were empty; there should have been kids enjoying a kick-about. And then I saw the kids. Dozens of them, of all ages, from about 10 to 18.
They had spotted the coach and were converging on it. Undeterred by the police dogs bordering the stadium, this young mob crowded around the coach, making the gun sign with their hands. Every single one of them. With two fingers outstretched and their thumbs cocked, dozens of fingers rapped menacingly on the coach windows. “Fenian bastards!” Their lips pouted into a ‘bang’ as if they were pulling the trigger and blowing us away.
The fear that night in Belfast was more manageable because I was part of a band of brothers. Sure, the dark, silent final moments of that coach ride into the city were unnerving. But we dealt with the fear, as lads do, by cracking jokes. The hotel where we were staying before the game was out in the countryside, surrounded by a big golf course. Everywhere you looked, across the stunning grounds, there were Alsatians and policemen. Armoured cars patrolled up and down the drive and, of course, we had our armed plain clothes men in tracksuits masquerading as players. First we joked about whether Jack Charlton would, in his blustering and occasionally blundering way, accidentally put one of the special branch fellas in the starting line-up.
(Captain Andy Townsend leads the Irish team out)
Then, with black humour, we started speculating about who would be assassinated first. We all agreed that it would be the boss, Big Jack, and pretended to be relieved at this fact. Why Jack? Well, he was an easy target: a mountain of a man with ruddy cheeks, flat cap, a booming Geordie accent, and a purposeful stride. More importantly, though, he had a distinctively long neck. So long, in fact, that the players nicknamed him ‘Swanny’. Don’t worry, we joked, if anyone’s going to take a bullet it’ll be old swan neck.
What’s more, the security concerns weren’t going to put Jack off his pre-match ritual of leading the squad on a midday stroll. On the day of the game, Jack and his assistant Maurice Setters were advised by the cops that walking the entire Republic of Ireland squad, all uniformed in tracksuits, around the leafy surrounds of the hotel was not a very good idea. But Jack would have none of it. So off we all set, behind Jack, accompanied by several policemen with semi-automatic weapons and an armoured car that trundled across the golf course tearing up the beautifully landscaped fairways with its dirty great tyre 14 tracks. I can only imagine the groundsman’s face when he saw the state of the 18th later that day.
Pre-match, at the hotel, there was another very funny moment. Jack Charlton was notorious for forgetting people’s names. Before our final group game in the 1990 World Cup against the Netherlands, Jack had beseeched our captain Mick McCarthy to ‘stay tight on Van Cleef’. Mick had to tell Jack that Lee Van Cleef was a dead Hollywood film star and not a Dutch striker. By those standards, Jack’s name for me was fairly accurate: Alan McDonald. The problem was we were now playing Northern Ireland, who happened to be fielding a certain centre-half named … Alan McDonald.
During the team talk I struggled to suppress my laughter as Jack told our team to watch out for Northern Ireland’s centre-half ‘Alan McLoughlin’ when they got a corner. As he continued to warn the team about the aerial threat of the opposition’s Alan McLoughlin I could see Jack getting more and more annoyed with the smirk plastered across my face. ‘And what the bloody hell is so funny?’ he eventually asked. That was pure Jack.
The above text is an extract from A Different Shade of Green: The Alan McLoughlin Story by Bryce Evans and Alan McLoughlin. For more info, click here.
Irwins kick spun off a defender,
And mcloughlins boot said no surrender!
A dirty bigoted night in Irish sport
never forget Billy Bingham as he whipped up the sectarianism. Any wonder Neil Lennon couldn’t play for them.
Lennon played 40 times for us
Why did he retire? Oh yes, death threats against him and his family.
Until ye saved the Union by threatening to kill him and his family. Huzzah! NS GSTQ KAT HMV BRB FYI AIDS
Rangers fans threatened him, NI fans respected him as an NI player
Bad crowd.
That’s bollix Adrian, he got feck all support from the IFA and Sammy Mcilroy too.
Bullsh!t Adrian. Neil got nearly as many bullets over the years as he did caps.
It’s not Bollix, he had nearly 40 caps. Get your heads out of the sand lads.
40 caps in this day and age is nothing Adrian. The IFA let Neil down big time at a time when they should’ve backed him to the hilt, and if that meant cancelling the match, then so be it. No wonder the likes of McClean and Gibson declared for the Republic.
They played for ROI because they hail from republican backgrounds. They are mediocre at best anyway so keep them. The Lennon saga is long played out too, even Neil himself praised NI’s work to rid the game of sectarianism. Articles like this only bring it to the fore again, we all suffered from nonsense up here for Christ sake. Im a victim of sectarianism myself, verbal and physical assault, im not a millionaire footballer either so nobody mentions it or cares.
Ask yourself how Neil got to 40 caps without any bother then the Bvllshit started after he went to Celtic, he was always a Catholic player while with us and it bothered nobody, we always had both religions in our team, we still do and they are taking us to France in 2016.
They played for the Republic because they are Irish. They do not see themselves as anything else. As for France 2016? In your dreams!!
There is a whole generation of people who don’t remember the troubles or who do but lived in peaceful suburbia down south and many of both groups today, judge from a distance and position of safety the actions of people who had to live with terror on a day to day basis.
They only remember evil men in balaclavas. They remember a grey, 3D situation as black and white. From 1969 entire street loads of people were being burned out of their homes and the only available police force was on the side of the people doing the burning…imagine that on your street and think about how you’d react
That’s what people had to deal with, and that’s one of the milder examples.
We need to give that era the real 3D look that it deserves, it wasn’t simple, it wasn’t black and white.
@Ryan agree the whole story should be told. The evil that was should be presented for what it was: evil
And as well as presenting 3D we should present a proper 360 degree view. All events, all sides. No more airbrushing history.
I used to have that black and white view myself until someone explained the strategy behind the IRA attacks on economic targets in the UK to me. I took an elective on the troubles the next year and started to really see things from both sides viewpoint, even the unionists why they feared a catholic govt (Mary I and James II etc all that deep rooted history)
There were plenty of provo attacks I still think were absurd even with a more 3D view. (mountbatton for a start) but we don’t have to agree with them just understand.
I was talking to two friends in the US military and when I was telling them about missteps the Brits made in the troubles they started to see how the US was making so many of the exact same mistakes in Afghanistan with it’s counter-insurgency strategy. On their next rotation one of them talked to his CO about night raids based on a story I told him about Operation Demetrius, he altered his tactics and asked him to get him any material he could on the troubles.
Looking at our history can help us avoid repeating the same mistakes.
And Gerry might even admit that he was in the IRA.
RYAN
YOU’LL FIND THIS VERY INTERESTING
http://aangirfan.blogspot.ie/2009/10/americans-murdered-mountbatten-and.html
THERE ARE PLENTY MORE RESOURCES, THE YANKS KILLED AIRE NEAVE AS WELL
We mugged them off by qualifying on their own patch.
Quality stuff Alan
Give me this stuff any day over that BOD tripe
lol
soccer is great with games like this, unfortunately the premiership is boring. I think a 16 team european super league would be brilliant, it would certainly bring me back to soccer.
Oh f*** off would you? There’s room in this world for more than one sports memoir.
Oh yes there’s all the room in the world, but there’s very little room or time in my life for crap memoirs. Enjoy reading about the intricacies of bod’s partnership with Darce and his roller coaster relationship with amy.. yawn
I was at that game and I can now say it was the most frightening sporting experience I’ve ever had.
The nordy supporters were shouting “Trick or Treat” across the police cordon at us referring to the Greysteele massacre two weeks previous when Catholics were murdered I a pub.
I jokingly asked an RUC officer if we were getting a police escort on the way out and he said “you’re getting one whether you like it or not”
There is not one person the south who hasn’t lived in the North knows what it’s like to live in what was essentially a war zone.
I was there too Ken, was intimidating for anyone not used to it, but par for the course for anyone who supported Derry City before they were forced to leave the Irish League. The hatred was palpable but the joy leaving Windsor Park meant this was one if the best nights of my young life.
I was 14 when that game was played and I’m from the north. I can pin point it as the moment I realised that NI were not my team and never would be.
Alan mcloughlin,
thank you for this honesty that’s difficult to find in the media….
“two IRA men had entered a fish and chip shop on Belfast’s Shankill Road, intending to leave a bomb for a group of loyalist paramilitaries meeting upstairs.”
Frizells was uda hq
They murdered 9 civilians
Both of those statements is true
IT Was uvf terror meeting upstairs that was the target, and of course the uvf went after innocents,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
It was the UDA, not the UVF
The most disturbing thing is the description of those children showing such hatred and bigotry. But then what can you expect when you see babies being carried in arms at the Orange marches. Otherwise a very entertaining piece.
Or children dressed up as provos at republican parades.
What does a Provo look like? They all were balaclavas and carry semi-automatic weapons.
*wear. time foe bed.
Spot on Mary. What hope for the children when their mothers facepaint KAT on their foreheads?
If you enjoy a sports biography with a bit of balls and integrity, rather than the tired old commercialised regurgitations of BOD and Roy Keane, then vote for this book as Irish Sports Book of the Year: http://www.irishbookawards.ie/2014-shortlists-voting/
In his latest offering, Roy Keane whinges and gossips about what ultimately amounts to f**k all. Alan McLoughlin, by contrast, talks about the big life issues: mortality, identity, and – most importantly – Jack Charlton’s love of Trivial Pursuit. If you want dozens of honest and hilarious recollections on Irish soccer’s glory years, but this book. If you want the same old sanitised sh** then buy BOD and Keano as your stocking filler. I would rather read about the USA 94 squad taking selfies of their cocks in Disneyland Florida in Macca’s book than Roy Keane moaning on about the Sunderland squad. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Couldn’t agree more Bryce, as soon as I saw this on the awards list last week, I was attracted to it as the one book that looked genuinely interesting, apart maybe from that one by the irish lady who worked for lance
Or you could actually read all the books and vote for them on merit?
Can remember watching it in the now defunct Irish centre in Liverpool – some night! Think San Marino played England same night and took an early lead
The play “Night in November” is well worth seeing
No that’s the special branch
Some years ago at a game in Dublin Ireland v N Ireland ,the game we won 3 0 ,,rem that game well ,,Think it was the only game that i felt kinda sorry for sport ,,one stage the crowed started to sing /chant ,There only one team in Ireland ,Well my heart kinda sank then ,,Dont get me wrong ,,Ilove my country ,as well as the north of Ireland ,But that day i felt sorry for the 2 people ,,A dad and his little lad that were beside me in the stand ,,Now i dont care about people think of me ,,but when u see a little lad with tears in his eyes all beacuse his team were 3 o down ,then u relise sport could b one way of geting people 2geather without casing any harm to anyone ,,We walked out of that stadium 2geather and had a dodgy hot dog outside the ground ,,PS that little lad wished me and our team the very best ,,and ment ,,
“I love my country, as well as the north of Ireland”. Exactly! Only people who want to stay in the past wouldn’t lend some support to both the Republic and Northern Ireland in 2014, or at the very least acknowledge the changes to management and football culture in Northern Ireland.
That’s true Crane, but Windsor Park is still not a very welcoming place for nationalists. Reckon if we pooled our resources together and had just one team like they do in rugby, cricket and hockey, we’d have a much better chance of qualifying for tournaments and kicking sectarianism out of the game.
Windsor park’s being rebuilt Roland. And the entrance is being moved from Donegall Avenue(so people like the author above won’t have to go past scary red brick houses) to what the City Council are calling a “boulevard” from the Boucher Road.
And there’ll be a new play park at the entrance and a new leisure centre to replace Olympia built into the new stadium. That’s pretty much neutral territory – Fulton’s & M&S Simply Food were never no go areas for Catholics. :-)
Regarding an all-Ireland team and an all-Ireland league/premiership – I’d love to see it – and I’ve given a ridiculous amount of thought to it and how the best set-up for Ireland would be a mini-version of the Portuguese league with provincial branches – but we’ve two professional bureaucracies now and since when did they volunteer to reduce their authority. I think we’ll just have to put up with having two shared teams for now and make the best of it.
NI can make the next tournament on their own, no need for a single team in my opinion. We are growing as a team and with the new stadium we will have a good footballing future. Cant wait to cheer the GAWA on in France in 2016.
I’ll look forward to my next visit to Windsor Park so Crane. Ireland jersey advisable or would I still be target practise for yobs? Adrian, would it not be something that could unite the 2 tribes, having them share an identity? Maybe have some games in Windsor and some in Landsdowne?
Sure you wouldn’t feel safe in Windsor you said. Im proud of my team Roland, a small country always punching away above their weight, mixing us into the ROI team takes that away. It’ll also be a Republic team with tri colour and HQ in Dublin etc so no chance will I ever accept it. As long as there’s a border there will be 2 teams. GAWA GAWA GAWA.
You would be no different to me wearing my NI top to the Aviva.
Roland – I go to landsdowne for all ireland home matches and can guarantee you that someone showing up with a norn iron or England Jersey would be lucky to get into the stadium without receiving some degree of hatred. Those in glass houses…..
That was a powerful read.
Is that Roy Keane on the far right?
he certainly is a neocon
Well played Sir
Remember that night well, in the end a 1-1 draw after 90 minutes of bog standard football seemed like a glorious 5 nil win.
That Van Cleef lad had some shot on him!
I do love the black humour, Gilmore bought me a few def comedy jam DVDs a few Christmases ago
Very truthful words said by a lot of people here on this matter. I had my first trip to Belfast there not so long ago and I have to say what a place to go. Let’s face it the people there are brilliant so kind and friendly. A lot of people say that there are places you should not go but the same can be said for any major town or city in the country. I love the north and people need to get over religious biggittory. I know that is not easy but it has come a long way. I will go there again soon. 32 countries and 40 shades of green
I remember a great conversation between Ray Houghton and Jack Charlton from that game.
Ray: “why did you take me off?”
Jack: “why not!”
Ray: “I was the only one getting any chances!”
Jack: “you were the only one missing the chances!”
Classic Jack Charlton
2014……Enda Kenny.
Congrats on not explicitly talking about water charges. I’m sure that was a big stretch for you
Absolutely agree, Adrian. Bigotry holds no copyright.
Well put