So I opened it, went in and – I’ll never forget it – I found Jack in the bathroom washing his socks in the sink.“‘Jack, I’m really struggling here, I don’t think I’ll be able to play.’ Silence.“I’m serious, Jack”. “And I used to think he was old then,” Packie smiles.With the passage of time also marked by a related milestone in 2015 – the 25th anniversary of Italia ’90 itself – Ireland’s legendary goalkeeper finally allowed himself to be persuaded to commit his memoirs to print.The engaging result is his autobiography, ‘The Last Line’, a revealing account of his life in football’s top-flight with Ireland and Celtic but a deeply personal story too in which his roots in his beloved Donegal are never far from the surface.For the purposes of this interview conducted recently in Dublin, however, we narrowed the focus to his memories of the big tournaments in which he played a central role for Ireland, first as goalkeeper and later as goalkeeping coach: from Euro ’88 through Italia ‘90 and US ’94 to Japan and Korea in 2002 – via, inevitably, Saipan.And with the Euro finals in France next summer now beckoning for another generation of boys in green, he offers his assessment of the state of readiness of Martin O’Neill’s team as we roll into a new year full of hope and promise for Irish football.On June 12, 1988, the Neckarstadion in Stuttgart was the feverish setting for Ireland’s long awaited debut in the finals of European Championship.Facing them were England and, at the far end of the pitch from Packie Bonner, the renowned Peter Shilton, a goalkeeper the Donegal man had actually come up against in very different circumstances many years before when, as a raw 17-year-old, he’d been invited to play for Finn Harps in a pre-season friendly against Stoke City in Ballybofey.“He was a big hero of mine because we got ITV and BBC at the time, and so we had ‘Match of the Day’ and ‘The Big Match’,” Packie recalls.“I was a Spurs supporter as a boy because of Pat Jennings, and the other two big ones for me were Shilton and Ray Clemence. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Commonly known as 'Pat' or 'Packie', Bonner is a on… "Bonner remained Ireland's number one choice goalkeeper for Bonner represented Ireland in all 12 of their qualifying matches for the Bonner struggled to maintain his place in the Ireland squad during the Bonner became the Republic of Ireland's most capped goalkeeper with 80 appearances for his country. (Laughs).”Ireland’s first appearance at the finals of the World Cup cemented the team’s place in the nation’s heart and, with his great leap of faith in the penalty shoot-out against Romania, changed Packie Bonner’s life forever.But, before that, there were goals in the 1-1 draws with England and the Netherlands which confirmed the arrival on the scene of ‘Packie the playmaker’, a phenomenon immortalised in a famous picture which showed Bonner with eyes blazing and teeth clenched as he prepared to launch another missile up the pitch. Packie Bonner has revealed he almost walked out on Ireland when Roy Keane returned to the set-up under Brian Kerr in 2005. I was older too and maybe I was starting to lose it a little bit. In 2002, to coincide with the launch of Total Shaving Solution into supermarkets, Tom signed up Irish goalkeeping legend Packie Bonner to star in a TV advert which would be aired TV3. Now fuck off’.“So I left, went back up to Mick and he just says, ‘Well, jump back up on the bed’ and he starts manipulating my back again. And the next day I just had one of those games – a ‘worldie’.“But when I came home Ann said to me, ‘You know that cheese was mouldy’. And Mick will say the same thing. The FIFA World Cup is the premier competitive international football tournament, first played in 1930, whose finals stage has been held every four years since, except 1942 and 1946, due to the Second World War. From the training pitches on, everything about it was magnificent. 42:42. It was a recurring problem I had at that stage.

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