From paradise to pandemonium: Remembering Saipan 20 years on

A former news editor called it the best decision he ever made, sending myself and cameraman Michael Cassidy to Saipan with the Republic of Ireland World Cup squad.

How was he to know he was sending us off to bear witness to the most seismic rift in Irish sporting history, a split that still reverberates?

A pre-tournament training camp in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

"World Cup warm-ups don't get much hotter than this" - That was the line we all used as we filmed our pretty preview packages from the holiday island so removed from the rest of the world that at the time it didn't even have a satellite uplink to feed our TV reports back to base.

Amid the oppressive humidity, the few broadcasters that were there decided to pool our resources as well as our cliches and stockpile some features.

"Irish squad relax in tropical Pacific paradise as World Cup looms large on the horizon", that sort of thing...

The plan was to send the tapes of our finished masterpieces with a human 'pigeon' on a plane from Saipan to Guam and onwards to Tokyo where, through the good offices of the BBC in Japan, our work would make it on to screens in Ireland and the UK. The hotel manager's son agreed to do the carrying for a small fee.

That's why Michael Cassidy ( Butch, obviously ) and I missed the now infamous 'barbecue' with the Republic of Ireland players, staff and the media which was intended to foster good relations ahead of the tournament itself.

We were busy editing our work in order to have it ready for the 'pigeon' who was due to fly out that evening.

The incentive for us was that if we packaged a few nice stories we get a couple of days to soak up the sun in Polynesian paradise. Nothing much was going to happen here, right?

We had, of course,