George Hamilton

But she called me because I was the local boy who was now in Argentina at the World Cup.

And it was a big deal back then to have somebody local at the World Cup.

I mean, Northern Ireland's 1958 had been a long time ago.

And she was calling me up to see a little bit of flavour of what life was like in the foothills of the Andes in Mendoza, where I was.

Because nobody had ever heard of Mendoza then, though they know all about it now because of the wine.

But I remember a phrase I used to her when she was asking me how it looked.

It all seemed to me remarkably normal.

There's no having to open your shopping bag when you're going into a department store or anything like that.

It was all just, there were lots of police about, but you'd expect that at a big major sporting event.

It's the same anywhere.

It would have been around the turn of the year.

Okay.

There was plenty of time, but I was overwhelmed at the thought of it.

And at the time, no internet.

I had my full set of Rothman's football yearbooks, which was the bad to make them for people like me.

And it had to be carried with you as like a traveling library.

Now it's just a laptop.

But I poured over that book for...

evening after evening after evening, of course, and all the history that I could find about the World Cup.

And I was very fortunate because RTE had decided that they would cover it geographically.