The Irish Homecoming: the honeymoon period of enjoying home continues...despite the soccer

There was fierce excitement across Ireland on Sunday afternoon. The European Championship were upon us. The Republic of Ireland soccer team had finally qualified after many years.  

As we drove home from Co. Galway on Sunday cars zipped by us on the new Galway/Limerick motorway with Irish flags poking out passenger windows. The country had Euro soccer fever.

Every second person we passed on the street wore an Irish jersey, and the impending game against Croatia at 7:45 p.m. that evening dominated all conversations.

“Will you watch the big game tonight?” asked a man getting gas beside me in a little place called Kilcolgan outside Galway city.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I replied.

“We should take the Croatians,” he said confidently.  Boy was he wrong!

The buzz on Sunday afternoon was quickly replaced with upset and disgust.

People emptied out of the bars even before the match was over. Croatia hammered us 3-1 and we didn’t take it too well.

“That f***ing Italian fella hasn’t a clue how to play the game,” cursed one of my husband John’s friends over the phone on Sunday evening.   He never was a big fan of the Irish manager Giovanni Trapattoni.

“He made stupid calls with the players and has messed up our chances of any kind of win now.”

On Monday morning people were full of gloom. The Irish team’s participation in the Euros had given the country something to look forward to.

Talk of the recession was put on the back burner. People whose mortgages are in arrears forgot about it for the few days leading up to the first game in Poland.

Some friends of ours had booked Monday off work in the hope they would be fighting off a celebratory hangover. The lads said Croatia was our easiest game in this group, so Ireland’s loss on Sunday was a huge blow to our chances of qualifying out of the group at all.

They have two games left, against Spain and Italy. The soccer experts on the television are saying forget it, the Irish team will be back home in a matter of days.

We have some friends who have gone over to Poland, rented camper vans and are enjoying the buzz of the Euros. They too were gutted when Ireland lost on Sunday.

It’s a pity really. It was a nice feeling to see everyone so happy, to see the comradeship between all.

Kerry lost to Cork in the Munster Senior Football Championship earlier in the day.  There was great rivalry, as there always is, at the stadium in Cork, but minutes after it came to an end fans from both counties joined forces in a local bar to all cheer on Ireland.

We definitely moved back on Ireland at the right time – for those of you who aren’t a regular reader of this column, my husband, John, and I along with our two kids, Colum (18-months) and Sadie (3-months) left New York three weeks ago after nine years in the U.S. 

We arrived home to wonderful weather, fantastic friends and a country full to giddiness for the Euros.

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Nster.com