Ireland inspire new wave of fans

The guy with the green, white and orange bucket hat and his friend wrapped in an Ireland flag, bundling last onto the Monday afternoon flight to Prague, were the first sign of the craic that was to come.

Two hours later as the Ryanair plane was descending into its destination the "Olé Olé's" had already begun, followed quickly by "We all dream of a team of Gary Breens", much to the irritation of two young Czech women sitting beside me who scolded the singers as they were making their way off the plane.

"Enough," one of them said sharply around the "Seven Gary Breens" part of the song.

But these fans had only just begun.

They were the first of the young faces I saw arriving into Prague. And there were even more when I returned to the airport the following morning to film the first wave of arrivals ahead of the big game.

There was the mischievous young man from Mullingar with a red toy parrot strapped on his shoulder, who stopped to tell me that he had come from Melbourne in Australia, through the turmoil of the Middle East to be here for the occasion.

His friends heckled him as he spoke, saying he’s supposed to be at work. It reminded me of the "Angela Merkel thinks we’re at work" flag from the European Championships in 2012.

"Are you supposed to be at work?" I enquired. "I’ve done a Stephen Ireland on it," he offered, suggesting people read between the lines about what that meant. "He’s at his grandad’s funeral," one of his friends clarified.

My thoughts and prayers are with him when he returns to work down under in the coming weeks, after his interview was viewed more than a million times on Instagram.

Watch: From Melbourne to Prague for the match

Beside the mystery man from Melbourne were a large group of veteran fans, who told me they had been going to games for more than forty years, since before Italia '90.

Over the course of the week, I’d meet others like them, but they were in the minority.

That first morning in Prague airport, it became apparent that most of people travelling to the city for this game, with or without tickets, were part of a new generation of Irish fans, for which the opportunity to travel away to a game, to be part of a big sporting moment and to dream of something bigger, was a whole new experience.

David McWilliams once dubbed a generation of Irish people "The Pope's Children". For me, these are the Children of Prague, who will remember, in years to come, the start of their football fandom in the Czech capital.

By Wednesday morning, the mother in me was beginning to worry about them as they walked wearily and white-faced across the cobble stones of Old Town Square in their retro Opel jerseys, after their first night of partying in Prague. The match was still a whole day away.

One bar in the tourist centre had already been completely taken over by fans, before the famous astronomical clock that people flock here to visit had struck midday. Their singing and high spirits, apparent for everyone to see, was becoming their own tourist attraction.

As "Olé Olé" echoed around, a grey van pulled up and heavily armed police in berets and bulging bodysuits took a walk around the square, but quickly returned to the back of the vehicle when they established there was nothing much to see.

By Thursday afternoon, the same side of the square that played host to those sing-songs was completely impassable because of the volume of mainly young men in green. Singing, slagging, gleefully filming social media videos.

People in rubber masks downing pints in the afternoon sun, while scarves and flags with Troy Parrott's image emblazoned on them were two-a-penny.

One wore what looked like a bin, but turned out to be a KFC bucket, on his head while a man in an inflatable parrot outfit with a bib around his neck waddled across the road as my cameraman took a shot.

Weaving their way through the crowd, one in a tricolour cowboy hat, both with flags painted on their faces, were a beaming, and slightly bemused, Jennifer and Josie Parrott from Portland Row in Dublin’s north inner city, whose boy was the only player anyone was talking about.

"I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much pressure on one player," I said to them when I interviewed them before their appearance on a special edition of Liveline from the Old Town, titled "Parrotts take over Prague".

Both teared up on television as they spoke about what it all meant to them, to him and the community from which they come, and sent a message down the lens to their boy Troy, that no matter what happened that night, their love for him was bigger than all the adoration on display on the streets of Prague.

It was clear for everyone to see. The mother in me had a few tears too.

Watch: Parrott's mother proud of son "no matter what"

We all know now how this ends. How close it all came. How we could almost touch it. All made harder by how well this team, who had been written off six months ago, but who turned things around in two unforgettable games in Dublin and Budapest, with a new self belief, turned up again in Prague and for a while looked like they could give the Children of Prague the Italia '90 moment they craved.

It wasn’t to be.

The wait for the World Cup, that was touching a quarter of century, will be almost three decades long at our next opportunity.

Some of the younger fans I spoke with after the game seemed quite bitter, full of blame and frustration at how we lost a good lead and let the Czechs catch up with us.

But that’s football. And as someone who suffered almost sixteen years of supporting a homeless Shamrock Rovers before they entered their current golden era, I can tell them that that level of pain makes you even more grateful for the good times when they they finally arrive, and can almost wipe away the memory of the wilderness years.

The Children of Prague’s cult hero, Troy Parrott, appealed to Ireland fans to stick with them. If they listen, and keep the belief that brought them to Czechia, better times may lie ahead.

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