蜜芽传媒

Colin Murray looks at the context around the night Northern Ireland's football team beat England in a World Cup qualifier in Belfast in 2005, considering the importance of the result for both the team and the country in general.

Featuring contributions from former footballers Jamie Carragher, David Healy and Stephen Craigan alongside fans, politicians and officials, the film reveals how Northern Ireland's footballing fortunes at the time matched how the country was struggling to put its difficult past behind it.
The team was on a European record run of 13 matches without scoring a single goal, and the country was enduring sectarian murders and the collapse of its government less than a decade after the Good Friday Agreement.

As well as the problems on the pitch, the Irish Football Association had also got serious governance problems, and their football stadium, Windsor Park, was in a dangerous condition and badly in need of a re-build. In the midst of all this, manager Sammy McIlroy walked out, and then Northern Ireland got drawn in the same group as England and Wales for the World Cup qualifiers. The prospect of England, with a team full of global celebrities known as the 'Golden Generation', coming to Belfast was both exciting and frightening for the players and the security officials.

The film's contributors chart how things began to improve for the team under a charismatic new manager, Lawrie Sanchez, and how he dared them to believe they could cause one of the greatest upsets in football history and at the same time change the sport in their country for good.