NEARLY half of us are optimistic that Ireland will escape the “group of death” and progress to the knockout stages of the European Championships, a survey suggests.
An online poll of 1,000 people carried out by Millward Brown found 49 per cent of people believe the team will get out of the group. Nearly a third (32 per cent) say that’s as far as Ireland will go in Poland, with 24 per cent saying we won’t qualify from the group.
Some 11 per cent are betting on Ireland making it as far as the semi-finals.
The hardy optimists, some 4 per cent of those polled, believe the boys in green will go even further and make it all the way to the championship final on Sunday July 1st.
Just 2 per cent, described by the pollsters as the “diehard romantics”, believe Ireland will proudly lift the Henri Delaunay trophy in Kiev that night.
But a full 18 per cent are not buoyed up by a general sense of soccer fever and claim to have no interest in the Euros at all.
The poll company said the survey was conducted among a nationally representative survey of 1,000 people between May 30th and June 6th.