00:00When we mentioned it, and Dr Tony O'Neill, when he put it together, people said, that's not going to
00:06happen, that's like going to the moon, you're not going to China to play soccer, but we did, and that
00:12was down to Dr Tony O'Neill and the kind invitation that he got from the Football Federation of China.
00:18We had played three matches before Chairman Mao died. Our big match was supposed to be in the People's Stadium
00:27in Beijing, Beijing, Peking then, and obviously after the death of Chairman Mao it was cancelled, and that was a
00:35huge disappointment to us because we were led to believe that there would have been 100,000 people at the
00:40game, but that obviously never materialised.
00:44We were in a garden in Shanghai, and we had a walkthrough, and we went to tea rooms to have
00:49some tea, and our president, Mr David Andrews, broke the news to us, and he broke it in Irish.
00:57He said, which means the chairman has died.
01:02I think for me personally, and for the group of lads that came back in 76, it's sport. Sport breaks
01:12oil. You can travel the world if you have sport, and I think, you know, if anything, that the sporting
01:20relations between Ireland and China get stronger, and hopefully sometime in the near future that we will both qualify for
01:27the World Cup and maybe play against each other.
01:29It was lovely to meet them, and I met my opposing captain, and I think six of his teammates, I
01:38have to say, I think they looked in better shape than us.
01:41They looked much fitter, much leaner. I'm sure if we played them again, the result would be the same because
01:47they beat us quite convincingly 4-1.
01:50Just the scale. I had forgotten how large a city Beijing was. I think it's 21, 22 million people. It
01:58was great to see the difference between 76 and 2026.
Comments