I've done a few posts recently on some of my old bits and pieces from childhood. Let me fill you in.
I called to my parents house last week and they weren't in. My three boys were with me and asked if they could see my old room, and so we popped upstairs in my parents house and had a look, we uncovered some interesting bits and pieces.
Old photos, sticker books, mementos and old equipment, including old cameras and a wireless as they were called then, we call them radios. I got the old equipment handed down as I thought they looked really cool back in the day.
Amongst my old football, hurling and soccer programmes I found this little book that I remember having during the 1990 world cup. I was very young, but I still remember it.
Let's have a little look inside shall we? Straight off the bat we have a map showing the flags of the countries who qualified and their worldwide location on the map.
Next comes a short history of the world cup. From humble beginnings in Uruguay in 1930, through sixty years to 1990. It's crazy that we are already closing in on the centenary celebrations.
We then get a brief description of each of the finals and the score from each of those games, as well as the logo that each world cup had. It gives a cool little insight into each tournament and I still like reading them all these years later.
There is also a breakdown per qualifying conference which is below.
But wait, there's more!!! You'll also get this penali pen, and all these pages about the 24 teams that competed in the 1990 world cup.
The last couple of pages show the six groups and the map of Italy showing all of host cities.
I remember this world cup fondly as my own country Republic of Ireland qualifyied for the very first time and the country went football mad and we had a good old craic at it too. Only a quarter final goal from Toto Schilachi was enough to send us packing at the Quarter final stage after we qualified from a tough group that included England, Holland and Egypt whonwe drew 1-1, 1-1 and 0-0 respectively. We then played Romania and another 0-0 draw after extra time left us facing penalties which we won 5-4 with Packie Bonner saving the 5th Romanian penalty, before David O'Leary scored the winner and every one in Ireland went cracked!!!
We had qualified for a World Cup Quarter final for the first time ever and we still haven't bettered that. In fact we only qualified for two more in 1994 and 2002, yep we had Keano then to help us qualify, although he only played in one, but we won't open that can of worms today!!!
The images used throughout are all my own captured on my Samsung Smartphone
