A Little of lefty's luck

By Brian Canty

Lefty Gomez, the Portuguese-American left handed Major League pitcher was a bit of a screw-ball. He enjoyed the odd practical joke, some argued he was just a nut-job who was good at what he did, and that invariably was pitching. He once stopped a World Series game to watch an airplane fly overhead. He came up with the idea of a revolving goldfish bowl to make life easier for older goldfish. His intelligence, well, the jury was out on that, but with 1500 strikeouts to his name, he wasn’t one to earn his rubles from the presence of brain cells. He once quoted, and the quote has since been re-hashed in dressing rooms, class-rooms and business meeting rooms all around this globe. It reverberated in its own simplicity; “I’d rather be lucky than good”.

A GREAT SPORTING MONTH

Its poignant, and particularly poignant as this small island is about to round off on possibly, the greatest sporting month it has experienced for quite some time.

Rugby Grand Slam champions, a boxing world champion and hopefully, by Saturday evening, punters around the country will maybe, just maybe, price the flights to South Africa for June 2010, “just for the craic”!

So far in this campaign, that wily ol’ geezer Trap’ is believed to have been lucky. He was lucky when the game in Georgia was moved to a neutral venue, lucky against Cyprus and lucky again when a referee awarded a penalty against Georgia that not even Robbie Keane saw.

BEST OF A BAD LOT?

Of the six teams in group 8, ‘la groupé morté’, only two teams have won games and there have been twelve games played in the group so far. Those teams are Ireland and Italy, but to be fair, we’re not in such a healthy position because we’re playing beautiful football. It’s because other teams have been shocking. Anyone who saw Georgia versus Bulgaria will understand.

On Saturday evening, the Bulgarians roll into town for a potentially enormous game in terms of where it puts on the ladder at 10 o’clock on Saturday evening. At that time, we will know, if we are just plain pretenders, or, indeed genuine contenders. Luck does appear again to be with us as the talismanic Dimitar Berbatov is sidelined with injury.

We could top the group on Saturday night but if the collective purpose that Trapattoni has stressed since taking over evaporates then the next two games could put Ireland in a position once more, of struggling to make second place.

Trap’ falls off his chair, struggles with his garbled English, and very often, in fact most of the time, doesn’t answer the question he is asked and lets his 70 year old brain wander off. But the most successful manager in the history of Italian football is getting results, putting bums on seats, and restoring the pride back in the jersey, which is no mean achievement when the likes of Jonathan Douglas get Irish caps. Much like Lefty Gomez, both men attribute their success largely to luck: "Sometimes, the mothers put their children in my arms because I am a lucky man and they want the luck to rub off."

A MUST WIN GAME

We need this win on Saturday night and we need it desperately. Montenegro have the ability to bore the Italians into submission and if they do, and our March luck holds out a little longer, imagine the prospect of leading the World Champions by two points going over there next Wednesday?!

Those results would probably stifle any hope the remaining teams in the group have of catching us and by the time next October comes round, we will have the Italians in Dublin for the shootout to top the group and the obligatory automatic stamp on the passport.

But lets not get carried away, the Bulgarians are in turmoil and that’s no secret, Plamen Markov was sacked in December as manager and three draws in their first three games suggest that all is not well for the team who reached the World Cup semi-finals in 1994.

So Saturday, we need the luck to continue because, we’re not that good! Hopefully, good ol’ Lefty will be looking down on us.