Under the management of Jackie Charlton Ireland qualified for the Soccer World Cup for the first time in 1990, it was to be held in Italy “Italia 90”, for people that were around at time, it will be something that will never be forgotten. For other countries winning the world cup was expected for us just getting there was a huge achievement.

In the group games we drew all of them but it was enough to get into the last sixteen.The next match against Romania was a real nail biter, after no score with extra time played, it went to a penalty shootout.

Everything in the country stopped and paused. Romania started first, scoring, follow by us scoring, this continued until round 5, the score now 4-4. Daniel Timofte stood at the penalty spot for Romania, he looked confident. Packie Bonner in the Irish goal got ready, Timofte runs up and shoots, Packie jumps the right way and saves. An explosion of joy in the country but it's not over yet. We needed to score the last penalty, David O Leary walks up from the halfway line and placed the ball on the penalty spot. The commenter famously says** “ a national holds its breath”** David runs up, blasts the ball to right, the keeper jumps to the left. We score and the party starts, a wave of joy swept the country

People's minds now turn to “how am I going to get there” people took out loans, sold cars, borrowed from friends, just to get the money to go. They went by boat, train car and aircraft. There was a massive airlift organized, anything with 2 wings and an engine was hired. There was mayhem at the airport but with the one intention was to get everybody out there for the quarter final against Italy .

On match day again the country stopped again but our hopes were dashed when Italy scored a single goal to knock us out.

On their return to Dublin 50 thousand people turned out at the airport alone to greet the team, another 500 thousand people lined the route into the city. Given that we only had a population of 3.5 million at the time you can see how big a deal it was.

Our mission

Leg 1

Fly as many people as we can, in whatever we have, as part of the airlift to Rome (LIRF)

Leg 2

Fly the team back from Rome to their heroes welcome in Dublin.

Created by 6 Knots