THE COUNTRY was bankrupt, denuded by recession and emigration. Stinging budget cuts were in the air. Health cuts hurt the old, the sick and the handicapped. Irish football fans travelled abroad for a big game in big numbers, more in hope that in expectation.

The date was February 18, 1987. The game was Ireland's 1-0 win over Scotland in the European Championship qualifying campaign, and as even the laziest fan of the Irish football team knows, it was the last time we won a qualifier away from home against a nation of consequence.

Kevin Doyle had not even started school when Mark Lawrenson scored the winning goal for Ireland in Hampden Park that day, but the former Cork City player is well aware of his history and he knows that it's time for the Republic of Ireland team, November 2009 version, to stand up to France in Paris tomorrow night, make some history and stop this becoming the year of the French.

"We need to make history now. We have a dreadful away record over the years, not just the recent teams but going back to Jack Charlton's time," Doyle told the Herald.

"We do well at home and we get good draws away but really struggle to win away. Now it's time to change that. Records don't last forever, they are there to be broken and it's up to this bunch of players to end that bad run and make it happen, get us to the World Cup finals. We have to win away in a big game at some stage, and tomorrow is a good place to start."

Of course everything points to a predictable result in Paris tomorrow night. Put simply, we never win a big game away from home (last one was 22 years ago) and the French never lose a big game in Paris (their last defeat in a competitive game in the Stade de France was back in June 1999, when Russia managed a 3-2 win there in the Euro 2000 qualifiers).

But Doyle hopes that a mixture of French indecision in defence at home (just two clean sheets in the last six games in Paris) and over-confidence from their win in Dublin will aid the Irish cause.

"Hopefully they will be complacent. They have the 1-0 lead, they are at home, they are planning on putting on a show for their fans. But we're looking forward to taking advantage of that," Doyle said.

"Also, France don't have the best of home records, in terms of conceding goals, so we are confident ahead of the game.

"There were a lot of half-chances in the game but we had the better of them, from what I saw anyway. Robbie had a chance, Liam Lawrence's shot was deflected wide, Glenn Whelan had a chance blocked so we can create and we can cause them problems. Hopefully they will be the ones desolate on Wednesday night.

"We're good at set pieces, most of our goals in this campaign have come from set pieces, so that's where we can hurt the French tomorrow night. The first thing is to get into those positions, to win corners and free kicks, and then hope that we can make something happen."

A keen student of the game who spent time learning another side of the it while at the Torino academy in Italy, Doyle sees the reach of football outside of what we call "these islands". He knows that it's rare for an Irish team to go through a qualifying campaign unbeaten.

Indeed, it's rare for any side to finish a qualifying campaign without a defeat, as of the 53 nations who competed in the European section of the qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup, only five teams managed it (Germany, Spain, Italy, Holland and Ireland).

So Doyle feels it would be a shame to now miss out on a place in the finals, having played 10 and lost none in the group stage.

"It would be a real pity to have gone through a qualifying group unbeaten and not qualify. You look at all the great teams who lost at least one game in the qualifiers, we were unbeaten against Italy and Bulgaria over four games, we beat Cyprus and Georgia and drew with a very good Montenegro side, so to do all that, in a very tough group, and not qualify would be hard to take," Doyle stated.

Soft

"You look at other teams in the competition. They had some soft groups, teams lost games and still qualified for the finals. You even look at the teams in the play-offs and it doesn't seem just or fair that we went 10 games unbeaten in the group and still are a bit away from qualifying."

It's a few days on now and the players have managed to get the after-effects of the French defeat out of the system, but it wasn't easy for Doyle or his team-mates. And Doyle was clearly unhappy with being replaced with a full 20 minutes left on the clock.

"I am never happy being taken off, being honest," he said. "I don't think any player is. There's something wrong with you if you are smiling when you come off. I know other players might sulk and kick a water bottle or something, throw a strop, but I just went and sat down, chewed on it for a few minutes and got on with it.

"It was still 0-0 when I came off. It was such a big game and you want to be involved in case anything happens, in case you can play a part, but we have another 90 minutes left tomorrow night to get all that out of our system," added Doyle.

"We were very tired, mentally as well as physically, after the game. There was a long build-up to the game, in reality we were building up to that match for the past 18 months, so it was nice to just get out and play it.

"We were shattered after the match. A lot of players find it hard to get to sleep after a game like that. We went back to the hotel and had a bite to eat, the Andy Lee boxing match was on the TV. Someone put it on, but no one was really watching it, we were just exhausted. So it was a case of having some food and then going back to our rooms.

"Now we move on to Paris.

"We knew beforehand that we'd have to score to go through and that's still the case. If we score one goal we'll take the game to extra time and if we can get two, we'll have a very good chance of qualifying, so a goal is the aim now.

"If we had drawn 0-0 at home, which wouldn't have been the worst result in the world for us, we would still have had to score in Paris.

"It's a strange scenario but we know what we need to do, keep a clean sheet, get a goal to take it to extra time at least, and see what happens then."

- Aidan Fitzmaurice