Trouble has engulfed the Republic of Ireland football squad after it was revealed players were upset with an “anti-English” motivational video shown to them prior to the England game at Wembley this week.
And Paddy Power News can exclusively reveal the footage that has caused the controversy.
The three-minute clip features traditional Irish singer Martin Brennan performing a medley of rebel songs and was shown in a bid to motivate the players ahead of an inevitable thrashing by England’s B-team.
“We had to do something to fire the lads up”, said a source with knowledge of the situation.
“You saw the match, imagine what the score would’ve been if we hadn’t shown them this vid?”
Ireland lost the game 3-0 with a scintillating display of passing accuracy and failure to progress beyond the half-way line.
“You could see it really connected with some of the lads, they were tapping their feet, clapping – if Andy Reid had been here there’d have been a sing-song after it, no doubt.”
“But a few lads were confused. One asked ‘why are they singing that song from the ham ad? Are we really that hard up for a sponsor?’”
The rebel songs approach was used after a number of failed attempts to instil a belief in the team that they could win at Wembley.
A Youtube compilation of Eamon Dunphy slating England at World Cup was undermined when it autoplayed him slating Ireland right after.
The staff then attempted to play the Italia ’90 Reeling in the Years sequence but accidentally landed on the 1986 episode instead where half the country emigrated and the other half accepted Chris de Burgh as a style icon and rock god.
“Christ, it was so bleak. Even Shane Duffy was in tears,” our source said.
Though efforts were made to rectify the situation before resorting to rebel tunes.
“We put on Michael Collins one evening, but Julia Roberts’ mixture of Welsh and Indian accents lost a few of the lads straight away.”
“And when they realised John McClane wasn’t turning up to throw Hans Gruber off the roof of the GPO they lost all interest.”
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