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DODGY TACKLE: It’s coming home... peil ag teacht abhaile...

'Letterfrack Kid' Harry Kane and team-mates celebrate reaching the Euro 2020 final after beating Denmark on Wednesday night <br />Picture bv AP
'Letterfrack Kid' Harry Kane and team-mates celebrate reaching the Euro 2020 final after beating Denmark on Wednesday night
Picture bv AP
'Letterfrack Kid' Harry Kane and team-mates celebrate reaching the Euro 2020 final after beating Denmark on Wednesday night
Picture bv AP

Ah here lookit, sure it’s hard to believe that the Trí Leoin are getting so close to winning this oul’ Henri Delaunay [Henry Delaney] Trophy that you can almost smell, feel and taste the next 55-odd years of smug BBC reminders on Football Focus, the Antiques Roadshow and everything else in between.

You’ll surely know the full soft focus drill by now – unless you’ve being trapped like a blootered whelk with earmuffs under a big rock of your choice since Geoff Hurst and Jules Rimet destroyed television and football on July 30, 1966...

Jaysus, the craic isn’t half [Italia] 90 now, though, fellas. There’s Hárry Kane, the Letterfrack Kid himself, being paraded around Páirc Wembley on the cold shoulders of Jáck Grealísh and Déaghlan Ríce.

Father Pat and late grandfather Michael John from Connemara of all the places in all the world. Sure you’d nearly know to listen to that curly tongue of his that Harry’s a fly offshoot of western Irish loins.

Ah here, what an emergency blood sub Jáck has proved to be for these sleekid abductors too. Ma’s Da from the Pale itself, Da’s Da from Gort, county Galway, Da’s Ma from Sneem, county Kerry.

The cub may as well be Ciaran Kilkenny, Pádraic Joyce and David Clifford rolled into a pair of half-price Arnotts curtains, an Alice band and half a pair of white socks from Penneys in O’Connell Street. Waxed thighs and dancing feet from the Gods of legs, I’ll tell you now for nothing too.

And doesn’t Déaghlán óg of the finest Rebel County stock look well over the moon and far away with this whole football homecoming guff?

Who can forget the young fella’s pride on his senior bow for the national team? March 23, 2018. A 1-0 clipping by Turkey under Martin O’Neill in case you’ve forgotten in all the handlin’.

Sure didn’t Micko promise to give the big would-be Nemo Rangers midfielder the armband and build a new Republic around the new garsún on the block before handing the reins to Stephen Kenny after winning last year’s Euro 2020?

Now, now. You’ll win some and you’ll lose some, as they say in Douglas where Déaghlán óg would have holidayed for a load of weeks every wet summer in life with oul’ fella Séan and the brood.

And is that the boul’ Hárry Maguire I spy lurching about in the middle of the céilí too? I’d say it’s the same boyo alright.

It only seems like yesterday that his forehead was mangling medicine balls at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Primary School in Spinkill, near Sheffield, just 227.1 miles as the Ryanair plane flies from Dublin.

And there’s the Russian assistant ref himself, a nephew I’m led to believe of 1966 lino of the year Tofiq Bahramov, being given two MBEs, a knighthood, a plate of champ, a St Jude [Bellingham] relic and the bumps as we speak for all his help before doing a runner from Donnarumma and Giorgio Chiellini.

And what more can be said about big County Tyrone Mings?

Stepped up to the plate in ‘Slabhead’s’absence in the early group stages and defended like an above-board Red Hand dog.

Right, time for a pint or two of Jameson and a singsong on the sofa with Báddiel and Skínner.

A haon, a dó, a trí: “Tá sé ag teacht abhaile... peil ag teacht abhaile...”