Hoping for a Prague Spring

So, it comes down to this.

If we get past our hosts in Prague tonight, it will be either Denmark or North Macedonia at the AVIVA next week.

By now, the craic in the capital city of the Czech Republic will be ninety.

For some, just being in Prague will be a spiritual experience.

For a certain generation of Irish people, no house was complete without that little statue.

The one that belonged to my late father is in this house.

Of course, a strain of impudent anti-clericalism was also part of the scene.

For others,  the gathering in Prague today is an opportunity to unleash their inner child.

My choice of featured image is indicative of that.

For the revisionists at Raidió Tel Aviv Éireann, their Section 31 reflex is, sadly, alive and kicking.

Of course, whether anyone actually SHOULD go to Trump’s World Cup in the summer is a scéal eile.

Outside of my little island, I have more kin in the USA than anywhere else on the planet.

My lot turned up there long enough ago to have taken part in the Civil War.

10^th Ohio Infantry.

As historian Damien Shiels informed me, the Ohio 10^th “was a heavily Fenian regiment”.

Bródúil.

I love the place for all of its faults.

Firstly, it isn’t a cultural crime across the Pond to be Irish.

Viewers in Scotland have their own programme.

However, any travel plans that I can, regardless of what happens tonight against Czechia, have been put on ICE.

So, can we do it?

I’ll leave the casting of the runes to others.

Currently, your humble correspondent is fairly calm about this

I’m always the same until Amhrán na bhFiann, and then we go again.

It’s a night for big Liam Scales to man the bearna bhaoil.