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British Champions 1 - England 0
Fans celebrate after the match. OK it's a crap picture but my phone has no flash.
Fans are still singing and cars hooting their horns up Tate's Avenue and along the Lisburn Road as I type. Chants of "Healy, Healy, Healy" being followed up by rousind renditions of "We're not Brazil we're Northern Ireland" and "Are you Scotland in disguise?" (sorry Graeme). It's music to my ears! What an absolutely beautiful night for football this evening has been. Underdogs Northern Ireland scored a hard fought and well deserved win against an apparent behemoth of an England team packed with premiership talent.
A blistering strike from David Healy past England keeper Paul Robinson saw me biting my nails for the last 15 minutes only to see Northern Ireland hang on for what is a truly historic victory.
But wait, there's more. Cast an eye quickly over to RTE and the beggars have been beaten by France! Could it get any better? Naturally RTE didn't see fit to even mention what was happening 100 miles away in Belfast. Shocker.
Just look at the table:
P | W | D | L | GD | Pts | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Poland | 9 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 19 | 24 |
England | 8 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 19 |
Austria | 8 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 12 |
Northern Ireland | 8 | 2 | 3 | 3 | -5 | 9 |
Azerbaijan | 9 | 0 | 3 | 6 | -18 | 3 |
Wales | 8 | 0 | 2 | 6 | -8 | 2 |
It's still actually possible that we could finish third, with Austria, who drew 0-0 with Azerbaijan tonight, still to play.
I hope George McCartney and all the others who have recently dumped on Northern Ireland by refusing to play (or acting the maggot during training) are suitably angry with themselves for missing this.
Absolutely well done to all the lads tonight; they all played their hearts out and deserve to savour their victory.