Euro ’88: We Can Beat This Lot review – can’t beat this bout of nostalgia

Ireland's great football moments can be counted on one hand (okay, two hands), but boy do we savour them. And the one we most savour must be that moment when Ray Houghton scored the winning goal against England in Stuttgart 28 years ago. Euro '88: We Can Beat This Lot (Tuesday, RTÉ One) brings us back to Ireland's first-ever major international finals, when we beat England 1-0, drew with Russia 1-1 and were finally knocked out of the tournament by Holland. As a scoreline, it doesn't look very impressive; as a morale-booster for Euro 2016, it can't be topped.

“We had a dream, a dream that we could beat England,” recalled commentator George Hamilton. “We tried our best, and we did ourselves proud, to be fair, in the ’88,” said Ronnie Whelan, who had scored against Russia in the tournament.

This half-hour documentary, the first of three in the runup to Euro 2016, tells the story of Europe's underdog who proved they had bite. The FAI had just taken a gamble on hiring Jack Charlton as Ireland's manager – an Englishman who had played in an English club and played on the England squad that beat Germany to win the 1966 World Cup. "What would be our chances?" ask Gay Byrne, interviewing Charlton on The Late Late Show. "I would fancy us, actually," replies Charlton. You gotta have faith. Many of players he chose for his squad were unknown to the greater Irish public – by the end of the tournament, they'd all be household names. "The Irish fell in love with the team," said Evening Herald journalist Aidan Fitzmaurice.

Dads flocked to the credit unions to finance their trip to Germany. “They wouldn’t dream of bringing mammy,” noted Deirdre Ní Fhloinn. Few of them had places to stay, so just slept in their vans, coaches and even ditches, according to one fan. Germany had never witnessed such a sea of green - and well-behaved green at that. While English fans rioted, Ireland fans celebrated peacefully in pubs – so we did ourselves proud off the pitch as well.

This is a colourful, nicely edited collage of football nostalgia, soundtracked by the big hits of the 1980s (as Holland defeats us, The Pet Shop Boys sing It's A Sin), and of course by the team's rendition of the Ireland '88 anthem, We Are the Boys In Green.

Now, why can't Reeling In The Years be this much fun?