The Longshot: Tiny Montenegro eclipsing Ireland on football field

DID we beat Gibraltar last night? Print deadlines mean we have no idea at time of going to press, but we probably did, and Stephen Kenny may be proposing that such a result might mean he should keep his job for the next campaign. He might point out how the Irish rugby team are being hailed as heroes despite never going past the top eight in a sport that isn’t taken that seriously by more than nine countries. And that he at least has never lost by four, like Andy Farrell’s men did on Saturday.

More bad news is that despite what I wrote in this page last week (fake news!), we will not be guaranteed a spot at Euro 2028 despite being co-hosts, as Uefa rules state that if there are more than two hosts, automatic qualification of all host countries cannot be guaranteed. So we will be cheering for England, Wales, the Scots and our Northern neighbours to qualify as well, as two automatic spots will be held for two nations that fail to qualify. It is pretty disheartening to think that we might need to rely on others to get us to our own tournament.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t still qualify for Germany next year. Somehow we mathematically still can, although we need to lose to the Netherlands in our final fixture (really, don’t ask) to improve our chances of securing a playoff spot.

A country the size of Montenegro (population: 620,000) now has greater expectations of qualifying for tournaments than we do.

In the most intriguing clash from this evening’s action, they take on their neighbours, Serbia, with whom they were once part of Yugoslavia, even after four other Balkan nations had bailed on that hodgepodge of a country, before being called Serbia and Montenegro for just three years between 2003 and 2006.

The Montenegrins then decided to go their own way, voting 55% in a referendum to cut ties with the Serbs.

Their neighbours to the south, Albania, have actually been the surprise package of qualifying and their 3-0 win over the Czechs last Thursday means it is likely they will top their group with only Moldova and the Faroes left to play.

Hungary sit atop Serbia and Montenegro’s group G and the former’s 2-1 loss to the Magyars last week was a bit of a surprise, leaving Serbia with just one win in their last four qualifying matches under playing legend Dragan Stojkovic.

They haven’t kept a clean sheet in their last five matches across all competitions.

Montenegro have staged a comeback in Group G after a sluggish start to the qualifying campaign. They are now within two points of the qualifying spots and could leapfrog Serbia into second with a victory and even a draw would allow them to control their destiny. Montenegro’s recent performances include a 2-1 win over Bulgaria in the qualifiers, with Stevan Jovetic scoring a dramatic late winner. They warmed up for the trip to Serbia with a 3-2 victory over Lebanon in a friendly last Thursday, but have won only one of their last four away ties across all competitions.

Their defence has been somewhat shaky, with only one clean sheet in that run and a 2-2 draw with Lithuania in their previous away fixture in the qualifiers. Serbia, despite their recent struggles, are favoured with a home win priced at 2/5. A win for Montenegro is valued at 9/1 with the draw 4/1. In head-to-head encounters, Serbia won all three previous meetings with Montenegro, securing a 2-0 victory in the reverse fixture back in March with Dusan Vlahovic netting a brace.

Montenegro can pose a threat in attack, with Jovetic often providing the spark. The forward, who netted the winning goal in the last qualifiers, is priced at 19/5 to score.

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NOW that both ourselves and the French no longer have any dividends in what will happen in Paris over the next fortnight, the next sporting interest we will have in the city will be the Olympics next year.

Those Games will come too quick for five sports which were, however, announced as being part of the LA Games in 2028: cricket, squash, lacrosse, baseball-softball and flag football. Baseball was included in Tokyo (when the hosts beat the US) but it is missing next year. Cricket hasn’t been seen since 1900 and lacrosse since 1908 (if it’s included, why not hurling?). Squash has been a puzzling absence for a long time.

And then there is flag football, which I had to check up to find out it’s like an American football version of tag rugby. If you ever played British Bulldog on your estate growing up, you have some idea of it.

That game had the added advantage of only needing numbers to play it, unlike other activities, such as our neighbourhood Olympics back in the hazy days of my youth.

Unlike the internationally recognised event held every four years, our ‘Games’ were an annual summer event that would last as long as contestants turned up and we could innovate our facilities and equipment. We were lucky our houses surrounded a green encircled by a road, a natural arena for track and field, about 200 metres in diameter. Competitors would come from several estates away to take part or to spectate although one year a boycott was enforced after someone’s jumper went missing.

The girls tended to be better at the sprints, especially when they entered their gazelle phase in their early teens. In fact, one year a whole raft of girls were banned from the sprints because of puberty advantages.

The boys had the upper hand on the field in the shot put (half a breeze block), javelin (a bamboo stick), discus (frisbee) and hammer (hammer). For the high jump and high hurdles we would have to go hunting for milk crates, which would be held on to for use in our annual Dublin Horse Show a few weeks later (minus the horses). The pole vault was tricky as the bamboo market in East Cork didn’t stretch to anything bigger than the sticks we pulled out of inter-county flags or from sweet pea supports.

Instead the person brave enough to jump from the highest height (garage roof, house roof, ankle-busting high branch) was deemed our Sergei Bubka. I tended to fare best in the middle-distance running and was unbeaten in every steeplechase (there was a sloshing plastic sink basin for the water jump) between 1989 and 1991, being controversially disqualified in ‘92 for allegedly pulling an opponent’s T-shirt. I got my revenge in the hurdles that year; I hid the milk crates.

Our Games fizzled out for reasons I forget, but probably had something to do with the boys realising snubbing girls who were maturing physically was a huge, huge mistake.

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PLENTY of people, the bookmakers included, fancied a Northern hemisphere clean sweep in the RWC quarter-finals. Instead, England are the sole remaining side from this side of the equator still standing.

As bad as it feels for us to go down to the All Blacks, it is hard to imagine it is anything like the dismay of the hosts. They hardly let the Springboks inside their own territory during the first half on Sunday night, but still coughed up three tries.

The most bizarre moment of the evening surely came when South Africa were defending a scrum near the French tryline in the dying minutes and it had to be reset a number of times. During the breaks in play the stadium piped in a terrible dance dirge. It was jarring enough to be quite funny.

The only music that should be played during the game I will allow is the short trumpet trill that sounds like it is starting a Spanish bullfight.

To be honest, it wasn’t until Sunday night that I realised it wasn’t someone actually playing a trumpet, which, in hindsight, is quite a silly misapprehension to have had.

The person I was watching the game with was a bit bemused.

“How did you think they got it so loud?” 

“Acoustics?” was all I could muster in reply.

Apparently, the trumpet solo was first adopted in the south-west of France many years ago and it has regularly been heard at other French sporting fixtures for some time, including football matches. It first became a prominent feature at the 2007 Rugby World Cup.

Basically, it is now seen as part of the matchday experience, to get the the crowd engaged, and creating an atmosphere. And there was I thinking there was a small man in a beret blowing his horn.

The Bet

We’ll take an accumulator on tonight’s football action: Montenegro to get a draw in Serbia, Italy to do the same in Wembley and Slovenia to see off Northern Ireland for a three-timer that will net you north of 42/1