Dublin

He was fined 66,000 Euros. He said it had ruined his life as he didn't have that kind of money, he appealed and it was reduced to 50,000 euros. It was such an unusual thing to happen, he was know throughout Denmark as just, 'The football hooligan'. One of my best pals is Norwegian. He absolutely hates the Swedes. Loves the Danes,says they are his brothers.

The creator of this thread seems to think he speaks for the whole of Ireland. The last thread I remember from him was called something like : 'The view from Ireland' and had a similar slight trolling feel to it. There isn't that much between the two teams, Ireland do play more long ball, but definitely not as much as under Trapattoni. He absolutely forbade playing the ball out of defence or even much through midfield. O 'Neill doesn't, but he is against over doing that . In the last few games the team has definitely started playing more football. The players also look to be totally behind the manager now. Scotland are not that far away and should definitely keep Gordon Strachan. Your world cup group isn't as hard as this one, with a good chance to come second to England for a play-off place at least. I also don't think there's much between you and Wales, their group looked difficult on paper but didn't work out that way. For what its worth, I don't think we'll qualify. I can see a 1-0 for Poland tomorrow and someone horrible in the play-offs, as it looks like maybe we won't be seeded. Wales didn't do us a favour losing to Bosnia tonight, pushing them ahead of us into the final seeded place of the third place teams, at the moment. Good luck in the future lads.

Us too! Weird thing is we both have more than ten times their population. They seem to play with a lot of freedom. still find it hard to believe they are only picking from 300,000. Maybe they have some ringers? A few random Danes, Swedes and Hagar the Horrible

Not the same since they stopped the buy 1 get 1 free.

It sounds like his agent played a part in the decision. He's also Gareth Bales agent and tried his best to get Bale to switch to England, as he has an English grandmother. He told him about how many extra millions he would earn as an English international, while salivating about his own cut I suppose. Most agents really are scum. Good luck to Grealish, with three Irish grandparents he certainly has strong links, but not as strong as being born in England, with two English born parents. People who are calling him nasty names on twitter, are pathetic.

This thread certainly has legs considering it was started as a pisstake against our Scottish friends, and it certainly wasn't the view from most of Ireland.

I don't understand the optimism behind this thread. Having watched Ireland under Martin O'Neill for almost two years now, there hasn't really been one totally convincing performance. He seems to throw surprising selections at the last minute into big games. he doesn't seem to fire the players up, like most people expected he would and they always seem to play at a slow pace. He doesn't really look like he enjoys international management over the club variety. He needs to start Shane Long tonight and not Robbie Keane, because he scored two goals against a postman and Librarian. I think he will start with Keane and Walters. 0-0 is a possibility.

He made this list of most annoying goalkeepers to ever play against Ireland........ Ireland faced Iran in an intercontinental playoff to book their place in Japan and Korea. The first leg was in Dublin and a well-supported Iran were content to secure a 0-0 draw, their keeper Mirzapour did what pretty much everybody in the ground expected him to do - feign injury and roll about the place until the final whistle or an Irish goal. Luckily, Ireland took a 2-0 lead to Tehran,which included a beautifully-converted penalty after Jason McAtreer was brought down to concede a beautifully-converted penalty to restore a sense of justice. As we can see above, he was wearing tracksuit bottoms on the night, a fact which instantly added to the sense of distrust afforded to his behaviour.

No worries mate, it's late at night And yes I agree, the Germans get clinical at this stage of the group,but everything is still possible for the other three.

I wasn't listing all the teams Ireland got in the play-offs, just the best examples. I also listed most of those in the follow up post you seem to have missed!

Yes, also Turkey, Belgium and France. Play-off specialists

Whichever of us make the playoffs will lose, in my opinion. Two average teams that won't be seeded. In the past Scotland have seemed to be more unlucky with play off draws, getting the Netherlands and England,while Ireland got teams like Iran and Estonia. But that's because Ireland were seeded then.

We still owe you one for Gary Mackay in 1987 Well done on the point lads Having seen your other away matches, you got the point without playing well. That can only be a good sign.

I find it a bit strange that Wales, a country that haven't been in a tournament for 57 years have a really good chance of being in pot 1, and Iceland who have never qualified, being in pot 2. Nothing against Wales, who have obviously made big improvements in qualifying results in recent years, and deserve to move up, but pot 1 after more than half a century of not qualifying? This happened some years ago when Norway who hadn't qualified for more than 20 years, I think based a lot on friendly results, were put in pot 1 and finished well down their group.

Trappatoni was probably one of the most negative International managers ever. He was also really great at organising a team and making them very hard to beat. That's why we never lost a competitive away match, in five and a half years, until his very last one, against Germany. When he left, the team was ingrained in playing in a very cautious and defensive manner. That's why I wanted Mick Mccarthy a much more attacking manager to return. Martin O'Neill hasn't been able to release the players to play a more open attacking style, because he's just not that type of manager. If Ireland lose tomorrow, The FAI should bite the bullet, release O'Neill and give Mccarthy or another more attack minded manager the rest of the euro qualifiers, to build towards the World Cup.

Looks like a job for the em... one and only... Bletchley park

This Ireland team, but with Given instead of Westwood.

I was looking at this exact situation yesterday. Ireland are at the moment the highest ranked pot 4 team. They really don't need much to get into pot 3, even the bore draw with a highly ranked team like England, would have made that closer. Like you say, its a huge match for both teams, and for both of the next tournaments.

"We're the Sweeney, son, and we haven't had any dinner" "Now where's my 5 Million, you fat Swiss slag!"

Lots of discussions lately on this same point about Grealish, how English he is, only qualifying for Ireland through the grandparent rule. Sky's Sunday Supplement especially did it recently,two weeks in a row. What they never mention is, three of his four grandparents are/were Irish. He's more Irish than he seems on face value. I do think there's a really good chance, he will switch to England now.

To paraphrase Danny Blanchflower, we just need to work out how to get the late lucky, equaliser before the other lot have scored Scotland, Poland and Ireland are three fairly average teams with bits of quality here and there. There won't be much between them in most of the games. Whichever one or two of them qualify, won't trouble the real quality teams at the business end of the tournament.

Well done lads, you totally deserved to win,Strachan is doing a great job. I was very disappointed at how little football we played. we have Roy Keane, one of the best midfielders of his generation and O'Neill, another top class midfielder and the tactics are to bypass midfield, just like under Trapattoni! That's why I wanted Mick McCarthy back, you know what you'll get with him, football played the right way, that the players seem to enjoy playing, just like Strachan is doing with you guys. Anyway lets see how the return match goes in March. If we don't play more football, a draw is the best I can see us getting. If we finish in 4th place, we go from pot 2 down to pot 4 or maybe even 5, down among the dead men!