Dublin Opinion

At all turns - the world’s bankers can be seen re-emerging almost unscathed from their own rectums. I could, I suppose, delight or despair at this spectacle were I not the flippant shagger I am. Instead, my attention is drawn to the ‘bread and circuses’ option of the boys in green in action tonight at a rather big circus arena on Jones’s Rd.
It was Italians, I suppose, that invented the whole ‘bread and circuses’ option of keeping the proles distracted, so fitting it is that we have an Italian at the helm tonight. In the role, according to the assembled Irish hacks, of dumb beasts to the slaughter, we have Cyprus. For a few good reasons, the mention of the place has been bringing me out in a cold sweat recently. Not among those reasons is the fact that the name of the place is only one letter away from Billy Ray Cyrus… that’s another problem entirely.

It’s a recurrent cold sweat dating back to my tuning in an hour late to RTE’s coverage of our last away trip to Cyprus and being flabbergasted to learn from the commentary team that we were 4 or 5 goals down to the Cypriots with an open season declared on Paddy Kenny’s goal for all in the blue of Cyprus. I’m still filtering through and have yet to find the exact phrase in the Book of Revelation that confirms shipping five to Cyprus as announcing the beast - but I will find it, mark my words. I do know that the beast will address us in a Louth accent. He may well begin his reign by expressing surprise at the current rude health of Cypriot football. I remember them as being a team we automatically expected to beat up to about a decade ago. The first sign they were emerging from the minnow ghetto was probably a 3-2 home win over the Spaniards a few qualifying campaigns back. Their victory over us and considerable trouble caused to the Germans, the Czechs and most recently the Italians prove thay are definitely no longer in the minnow bracket.

More pointedly, in recent weeks, I have been noticing the progress of the club game in Cyprus. For a nation of only half a million people and with their own partition problem still simmering away, it is fairly astounding that they manage to have a representative this year in the Champions League group stages. The jawbreaking ‘Anorthosis Famagusta’ (sounds, in fact, a bit like a medical complaint affecting the jaw) are playing in Group B of the Champions League and are doing fairly well too, thank you.

They qualified by eliminating their Greek cousins Olympiakos and have since beaten the other Athens (well Piraeus) side Panathanikos in their second group match. They’ve also managed a very creditable away draw at Werder Bremen. A second Cypriot team is also still in the UEFA Cup. Eircom League clubs can only look on in envy at this level of achievement - Champions League Group Stage qualification remains a Holy Grail they sadly still seem well short of attaining. Drogheda’s effort this season was plucky as ever - but Kiev were a few classes above them. Anorthosis Famagusta appear to have a mixed squad of Cypriots and foreign mercenaries but they must still provide at least 3 or 4 players to this Cypriot squad getting regular Champions League action. Trapattoni doesn’t even manage to muster that many players playing at that level from all our Premiership bitparters. I have absolutely no explanation for this golden age of Cypriot football - perhaps discovery of a stock of Kryptonite somewhere on the island - perhaps a properly executed youth policy - any of you with more info - comment away.

I hope that the Ireland side on the pitch tonight will be slighty more organised than the shambles that gave us the nadir of Irish football against this same opposition a year or two ago. Looking at our central midfield partership, however, the cold sweats start coming back. Neither player is of international standard, I’m afraid. We just have to hope that Darron Gibson - having forced FIFA to countermand the Good Friday agreement - will mature almost instantly. If not, we might at least witness the assembled Irish hacks finally learning the cost of being dismissive of the Cypriots - and showing us a neat party trick gleaned from the world’s bankers.