The best of Irish Soccer. The kickstart the country needed. The men, the excitement, the places, the stories, the goals and above all, the journey. They were the best days of our lives. This is how so many of the Irish remember Italia 90 and all that came with it – the atmosphere of wild celebration, the scenes of chaos, the fine madness. Declan Lynch recalls the great moments – Packie's save and his leap into immortality; Pavarotti's Nessun Dorma and U2's Put 'Em Under Pressure; Kevin Sheedy's sweet strike; and all that drinking. Days of Heaven is full of hilarious accounts of how the Irish abandoned reality in that glorious time called Italia 90.
This is the first history of sport in Ireland, locating the history of sport within Irish political, social, and cultural history, and within the global history of sport. Sport and Ireland demonstrates that there are aspects of Ireland's sporting history that are uniquely Irish and are defined by the peculiarities of life on a small island on the edge of Europe. What is equally apparent, though, is that the Irish sporting world is unique only in part; much of the history of Irish sport is a shared history with that of other societies. Drawing on an unparalleled range of sources - government archives, sporting institutions, private collections, and more than sixty local, national, and international newspapers - this volume offers a unique insight into the history of the British Empire in Ireland and examines the impact that political partition has had on the organization of sport there. Paul Rouse assesses the relationship between sport and national identity, how sport influences policy-making in modern states, and the ways in which sport has been colonized by the media and has colonized it in turn. Each chapter of Sport and Ireland contains new research on the place of sport in Irish life: the playing of hurling matches in London in the eighteenth century, the growth of cricket to become the most important sport in early Victorian Ireland, and the enlistment of thousands of members of the Gaelic Athletic Association as soldiers in the British Army during the Great War. Rouse draws out the significance of animals to the Irish sporting tradition, from the role of horse and dogs in racing and hunting, to the cocks, bulls, and bears that were involved in fighting and baiting.
Italia ’90 was the best and worst of World Cups. It made a global star of England’s inspirational Paul Gascoigne and gave fresh confidence to English football but it was also the lowest- scoring of all World Cups, leading directly to the back-pass ban that transformed the sport. World In Motion travels from Africa to South America, via Europe and the Middle East, to hear from the protagonists of Italia ’90 and find out why it is still seen as a special and transformative moment, not just in English eyes but in other countries far and wide. It was a World Cup of firsts – from Cameroon’s quarter-final trail-blazers via the feats of newcomers like the Republic of Ireland and Costa Rica – but a tournament too which marked the last hurrah of the old footballing powers of the Eastern Bloc amid the collapse of the Iron Curtain. It began with the biggest shock of any opening game, as nine-man Cameroon beat Argentina, and it ended with the worst final of all, as West Germany beat nine-man Argentina with a much-disputed penalty. In between it gave us a big spectacle, a winning soundtrack and some unforgettable storylines. World In Motion speaks to players and coaches, referees and administrators, reporters and fans to gauge the full impact of football’s dramatic Italian summer – including meeting Roger Milla at his home in Cameroon and Totò Schillaci at his football school in Sicily. In the process it rediscovers a time when the game stood on the brink of change, with the Premier League and Champions League on the horizon, yet the World Cup remained a thrilling voyage of discovery – a land of novelties, from Fair Play flags to fan embassies to that first-ever penalty shoot-out heartbreak for England ...
From its earliest days, association football was seen not just as a contest between individuals and teams, but also between nations and peoples. The Irish national team was among the first in the world to participate in international competition in the early 1880s, but not everyone accepted it as a truly national entity. Sport in Ireland was disputed ground in a manner that was not the case elsewhere – even the term ‘football’ itself was a contested one. But soccer followers generally found no contradiction between their sporting and national loyalties, and the game found an important niche in Irish life, supported by many leading nationalists, from James Connolly to John Hume. This book provides a unique window into the history of Ireland and Britain, with keen insights into the making of national, regional, sectarian, class and gender identities that crystallised around Irish soccer. Taking the story from the 1870s up to the present, it examines the domestic as well the international game in Ireland, North and South, and sets both in a richly detailed historical and cultural context. It also examines the experience of Irish communities in England and Scotland, and the ways in which the game affected their relationship with their host societies. Carefully weaving together political, social, cultural and sporting history, No Foreign Game tells a story not just of division and conflict, but also one of solidarity and celebration, and in doing so it breaks new ground in the history of Irish sport.
FC Barcelona are the greatest football team in the world, the greatest for a generation and possibly the greatest of all time. This is the inside story of how the team came to redefine how the game is played, told by the journalist closer to it than any other. This edition contains a new epilogue reflecting on the departure of Pep Guardiola and Spain's victory at Euro 2012.
Bouts of Mania describes the glorious era when Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman fought each other in every possible combination, on nearly every possible continent. In their most memorable bouts from 1971 to 1975, the three men created athletic set pieces that continue to resonate: the Fight of the Century, Down Goes Frazier!, the Rumble in the Jungle, and the Thrilla in Manila. Their fights for the heavyweight belt (when that title still meant something) made for a roiling and convulsive tournament, all the more striking against a backdrop of national dysfunction. In fact, their heroic efforts—global spectacles that offered brief glimpses of clarity and confidence—may have been the only thing that made sense back home during the social and political morass of the 1970s. In Bouts of Mania, Richard Hoffer, a longtime writer for Sports Illustrated, evokes all the hopes and hoopla, the hype and hysteria of boxing's last and best “golden age.”
"I was living in a fairy story--the kind with sinister overtones and not always a happy ending--in which a young man loves a beautiful maiden who returns his love but is always disappearing into some unknown and mysterious world, about which she will reveal nothing." So John Bayley describes his life with his wife, Iris Murdoch, one of the greatest contemporary writers in the English-speaking world, revered for her works of philosophy and beloved for her incandescent novels. In Elegy for Iris, Bayley attempts to uncover the real Iris, whose mysterious world took on darker shades as she descended into Alzheimer's disease. Elegy for Iris is a luminous memoir about the beauty of youth and aging, and a celebration of a brilliant life and an undying love.
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor Here we are together in the digital universe. Somehow, you've clicked yourself to this page. If you came here of your own free will and desire, you and I are going to get along just fine. Life is full of choices. Right now, yours is whether or not to download the autobiography of a mid-grade, kind of hammy actor. Am I supposed to know this guy? you think to yourself. No-and that's exactly the point. You can download a terabyte of books about famous actors and their high-falootin' shenanigans. I don't want to be a spoilsport, but we've all been down that road before. Scroll down to that Judy Garland biography. You know plenty about her already-great voice, troubled life. Scroll down a little further to the Charlton Heston book. Same deal. You know his story too-great voice, troubled toupee. The truth is that though you might not have a clue who I am-unless you watch cable very late at night-there are countless working stiffs like me out there, grinding away every day at the wheel of fortune. If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor documents my time in blue-collar Hollywood, where movies are cheap, the hours are long, and the filmmaking process can be very personal. To keep up with the times, I've digitized Chins. It was originally published in hardcover/analog fifteen years ago, which is a vast amount of time in the evolution of books and technology, and it was time to get current. The advance of technology is great for a book like this, which is jammed full of pictures. When it came out originally, the photographs all had to be black and white and moderately sized on the page. Now, any photo that was originally taken in color can strut its stuff. Overall, the resolution of the images is off-the-charts better than the first go-around. This is one "sequel" that I'm happy to be a part of, since we could make so many technical improvements. The process was very similar to restoring an old movie. Since I knew that it was going to be reissued, I also had a look at the story being told and decided to condense, move, or clarify some chapters, all or in part. I also tried to add a hint of historical context, since it has been a decade and a half since Chins first came out. I hope you enjoy it. Regards, Bruce Campbell
