Pizza or Potatoes - Let's let the Billy Goat decide
2012-06-18
Monday 18th June - After making an extremely successful debut appearance last week before the Italy v Croatia match, Poznan's legendary mascot, billy goat Przylep again forecasted the outcome of the evenings meeting. Tonight on the pitch in the Poznan stadium on Bulgarska street, the teams from Italy and Ireland will play against one another - who will the goat go for?
Just after midday in the Poznan Fan Zone on Freedom Square, billy goat Przylep was again asked to indicate who will be the winner in the forthcoming evening's match.
Przylep had a choice of either a pizza (Italy), or a plate of spring cabbage and potatoes (Ireland).
Time passed, and the goat hesitated, it seemed that he couldn't decide which dish was the more interesting, and thus, appetising for him. Only when it was decided to add hay to each of the dishes, Przylep overcame his initial reservations, and came up to sniff the tray containing the pizza.
Does this mean that the results of today's match will be an easy win for the Italians? Hard to say, because it took the hay (a familiar element in western Ireland) to tempt Przylep in the first place, so the results might go either way... Although the tray containing the pizza was certainly his first choice, we can guess that tonight we will be witnessing a very interesting duel, in which the Irish team will give everything they've got against Italy! This will be the final game for the Irish regardless of the result having lost their opening two games against the Croats and the Spanish respectively.
Paul McKeown