Gone to defeating wins from draws of victory

Fans left to bemoan beating Armenia

- Billy Scanlan

IRELAND'S football fortunes have fallen so far we've been relegated from celebrating 1-1 victories to bemoaning 1-0 victory defeats.

Few who were around when they happened will ever forget the many draws we won against England.

Those were the good middle-aged days. Our men's national team set the standard for not winning our way to success.

We were so good at it there was even the chant: “You'll never beat the Irish”...

So true back then, though you'd never lose to us either, but no need to sing that.

We drew our way to a World Cup quarter final - coming just one clump of pitch away from drawing a penalty shootout via Tony Cascarino's boot along the way.

Then we almost drew our way to victory over Italy four years later in America - but Paul McGrath went off script and made sure we actually won.