Ireland vs France

I've done a few posts in recent months on some of my old bits and pieces from childhood. 'What do you mean' says you...

Let me fill you in.

I called to my parents house a couple of months back and they weren't in. I was about to turn on my heel, but my three boys were with me and asked if they could see my old room as they like to do sometimes, and so we popped upstairs in my parents house and had a look, and 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 now. I got the old equipment handed down as I thought they looked really cool back in the day.

This post is about the match and racing programs I found and today it's about the match programme from Republic of Ireland's 2004 World cup qualifier against France in Stade de France.

Myself and around ten of the lads made the trip over and we had some craic in Paris that weekend. Even though it was an away match, we had more Irish people in the Stade de France than France had! Around forty thousand of us descended on Paris to cheer on the Irish soccer team.

As is often the case with Football matches, the build up to the match was almost as good as the match itself. All the Irish met up at Moulin Rogue and had one hell of a session and a sing song.

This is how the two sides lined up that night.

Here's a few more photos from the match day program.

Fair play between Cameroon and France.

Barthez acting weird with sign!

Thierry cashing in on holding a bottle of powerade in the arse pocket of his baggy jeans. Remember when they were all the Rage... the auld Baggy jeans, actually I think they're back in fashion again. Fashion is one big merry go round anyway designed to keep people buying more and More and MORE!

Anyway back to the match, it ended 0-0 which was quite the result against the French and us fans were delighted and we could even have knicked the win, with John O Shea hitting the cross bar with a header in the second half.

It was a quality weekend all things told though, and we visited the Eifel tower, Notre Dame cathedral and lots of other famous sights. The most famous sight of all would have been that John O'Shea header had it gone in, bug alas it did not and we had to settle for a point.

The images used throughout are all my own captured on my Samsung Smartphone

Thanks as always for stopping by everyone.

Peace Out