The Divine Comedy

By Rachel Griffiths

Tuesday 29 June 2010 13:30, UK

The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon gives skysports.com his favourite memories from World Cup history.

The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon remembers some iconic memories from World Cup history

The Divine Comedy are back and their tenth album, 'Bang Goes the Knighthood', is out now on Divine Comedy Records via PIAS. The band are a familiar name and experienced UK top 10 success with single, 'National Express', in 1999, while compilation album, 'A Secret History", charted at No. 3 in the same year. To mark their return to the pop scene, skysports.com caught up with frontman and founder member Neil Hannon to chew the fat over memorable moments from years gone by in the World Cup.

World Cup memories

1982 - Spanish World Cup

Being from Northern Ireland we were all very excited to be in the World Cup. And then we beat Spain in the group rounds, which was massive because we beat the hosts on their own soil. Beating anyone, frankly, was a huge achievement for Northern Ireland. But to beat Spain was amazing. I just remember this fantastic celebration from Gerry Armstrong, who did this sort of amazing windmill-arms thing as he ran away from the goal. I was about 11 and my brother and I were watching it, and we just couldn't watch after that goal because we actually would have wet ourselves. It must have been a hot summer because we just stayed in the back garden and kept asking if it was over yet.

1990 - Flying the green flag

Northern Ireland got to the finals again in 1986. I don't really remember much about it but I don't think we did very well. Then it was the Republic of Ireland's turn to fly the green flag at Italia 1990, which was unbelievable. It's great coming from Ireland because you can have two teams to support. I was born up in the north but I live in Dublin, so I can go for either really. They did amazingly anyway, and also everybody loves the Irish because we've got particularly good fans that don't beat anybody up. We got through to the last 16 and I remember winning the penalty shoot-out against Romania with Pat Bonner in goal. It was incredible.

1994 - Houghton heroics

Ireland didn't get as far in 1994, but I remember I was playing a gig in Paris and they were playing Italy in the group stage at exactly the same time. After a few songs I got a report that we had scored through Ray Houghton, which was huge. For the rest of the gig I wasn't really concentrating on the songs! It was great coming off stage to find out we had won. And it was a great goal when I finally got to see it.

2002 - Roy's rage

Of course I have to bring up 2002 in Japan and South Korea and the Roy Keane incident. He had a bit of a row with the manager, Mick McCarthy, and then decided not to play. Which was great, because it meant we were nobbled before we even began. That kind of threw a wet blanket over the whole thing.

1986 - Hand of God

There was Maradona's 'Hand of God' of course, which the English went completely berserk over. I guess my opinion is it was a hand ball, but we didn't really care. But of course we ended up caring when Thierry Henry did a similar thing in the World Cup play-offs. His was a bit more blatant than Diego's, it was like, 'let's play a bit of basketball in the penalty area'. I got my own back though when I was in France recently doing my promotional campaign. I was on the telly, and they asked me, unwittingly, who I wanted to win the World Cup. And I said, 'anyone but France!'. Not that Ireland were anywhere near good enough to go to the World Cup this year, but that's not the point.

1998 - Les Bleus

France had their glory in 1998 and it was a great tournament. I was in Paris for most of it and it was an incredible atmosphere. I didn't actually get to any of the games because I was working, but we managed to get into a bar somewhere to watch some of the matches. It's really funny watching it in France because the French are like, 'I love football!' when they're playing really well, and then when they let in a goal they all just start to drift away going, 'stupid game!'. I was actually on the Champs Elysees when they won the semi-final and the people and the noise was amazing.