A couple of years ago, a letter, posted in Australia and addressed to Con Martin, Footballer, Ireland, was delivered safely to Martin's house in Glasnevin, Dublin.

The sender was Willie Walsh, another former Ireland player, who emigrated to Australia in the 1950s, shortly after finishing his career with Manchester City.

They haven't met in all that time but on Tuesday next they hope to speak on the telephone to recall a famous victory which, over a bridge of 50 years, has stayed fresh in the memory.

September 21st, 1949 was the first of the great football occasions for the Republic of Ireland. Only once before had a team from the south of Ireland met England - at Dalymount Park in 1946 when Eamonn De Valera, the Taoiseach of the day, marked the significance of the occasion by hosting a formal reception for the English team at Government buildings. De Valera, conscious of the need to improve relations with London in the aftermath of the second World War, may have had matters other than football on his mind when he decided to approve the historic event, but it was still forward thinking at the time.

Now the Republic of Ireland were going to play England in their own back yard. And the fact that the game would be staged at Goodison Park, at that time the biggest focal point in British football for people in this country, merely added to the sense of occasion.

At last, Irish supporters would have the opportunity of travelling abroad with their team. And if the numbers paled in comparison with the 8,000 or so who turned up in Valletta for the recent game with Malta, the mail-boats between Dublin and Liverpool echoed to the familiar sounds of football fans. Tommy Lawlor from Finglas was one of those who made the trip and still has a match programme to prove it. "It was the first time that many people here had a chance of watching Ireland play away - and they made the most of it," he says.

"Those were the days when the boats sailing between Dublin and Liverpool carried more cattle than people. But we were young then and we didn't allow it to take from the enjoyment of it all.

"We paid five shillings at the turnstile for the privilege of watching a great Ireland win. And for a lot of people it was just the first of many adventures with the Irish team." In fact, many of the fans were already in Liverpool before the Irish players arrived at the team hotel in Southport. Unlike the modern practice of assembling the squad days in advance of an international game, they didn't meet up until some 24 hours before the match. And then they made their own way, by bus, boat or train, to the meeting point.

Frank Johnstone, who sat in the Goodison press box that day, covered the game for The Irish Times. He recalls the pre-match training as something of a shambles.

"Only five or six of the players in the team turned up for training. It was all very disorganised, certainly not the kind of preparation that spoke of heroics in the making." Two of those who togged out for training were Shamrock Rovers' teammates Tommy Godwin, a goalkeeper, and Tommy O'Connor. Both would have a profound influence on the drama which followed.

Those were the days when the national team was selected by a five-man committee, usually made up of FAI officials attached to League of Ireland clubs. Captain Tom Scully was Shamrock Rovers' delegate to the FAI and was normally in a position to press the valid claims of some of his own club members.

The story is told that after Scully had succeeded in convincing his fellow selectors to go with O'Connor in preference to the more experienced Tommy Eglington for the Goodison game, he rang the club ground at Milltown with the good news, only to be told that the winger had been left out of Rovers' side for a Shield game, the following Sunday.

"In that case," Scully is reputed to have said "you had better put him back in the team - we've just selected him in the side to play England next Wednesday." Thus did O'Connor, a staff member of this newspaper for many years, get his chance of claiming a place in Irish sporting folklore.

Con Martin arrived in Southport by bus from Birmingham where he played with Aston Villa. He was one of those who didn't train because of an injury sustained the previous Saturday. He recalls the journey to the game as something less than reassuring.

"There was a sing-song among the lads on the bus going to Goodison Park and one of the tunes they sang was When Irish Eyes are Smiling. And looking around, I remember saying to myself `we may as well sing about it now, because there won't be too many smiles after the match'."

Jackie Carey, among the finest of all Irish players, was the team captain, the manager, the man who got them on the bus, the one who gave the team talk, such as it was, when they got to the stadium.

Martin, although a few years younger, knew Carey well. As students, they had once played against each other in a Gaelic football match in the Garda Grounds in the Phoenix Park, Carey for Westland Row CBS, Martin with St Vincent's, Glasnevin.

By the age of 17, Carey had gone to Manchester United, for a fee of £250. Several years later, he convinced Matt Busby, who was in search of a goalkeeper for the final piece of the jigsaw in the first of his great teams, that the answer to his quest lay in the remarkably versatile Martin, then playing for the Irish League club Glentoran.

"Jack Carey remembered a game in Madrid when I was pressed into service as an emergency goalkeeper against Spain and thought I could do a job there for United. "But days before Matt Busby arrived in Belfast I had an offer to sign for Leeds United as a centre half. And that appealed to me more than playing in goal."

With Godwin pulling off some fantastic saves, the need to hand the goalkeeper's jersey to Martin never arose in Goodison Park. But after 33 minutes of constant English pressure in which the ball was rarely far removed from the Irish penalty area, the big man, by now playing with Aston Villa, would have his say in the day's drama. .

Peter Desmond was fouled by Bert Mosely inside the penalty area and while goalkeeper Bert Williams got his hand to Martin's penalty, the ball was hit with such power that it carried on into the net.

"At the time, we probably regarded as it as a bit of a respite but as the game wore on and England still failed to score, the realisation began to dawn that we could achieve what no other foreign team had done, beat England at home," Martin remembers.

"And shortly before the end, we knew for certain that it was going to be a day to remember when Tommy O'Connor played in Peter Farrell and he lobbed the ball over the goalkeeper for our second goal. "To be fair, the England players took it well. After the game their captain, Billy Wright, whom I knew well from the derby games between Villa and Wolves, came up to shake my hand. And I'm not sure which of us was the more shell-shocked."

Tommy Lawlor and those who made the journey by boat to the game can recall the revelry on the return journey as the first of Ireland's famous wins was suitably toasted. But for Martin and his teammates, there were no celebrations.

"Davy Walsh and myself got a lift back to Birmingham on a bus with a group of West Brom supporters who had come up to cheer England. We stopped at a pub, had a few drinks, bought fish and chips and were home, almost before dark.

"It was business as usual at the club the next morning. There was no mention, that I can recall, of the result the previous day. There was another game to be played in two days time. But there would be time, lots of it, to go back over the game, after the boots had been put away."

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the game, the entire team, with the exception of Willie Walsh, was brought back to Dublin for a celebration banquet. Now only five of the side which looked history in the eye on that remarkable day in Liverpool survive.

Tom "Bud" Aherne and Peter Corr, both unwell, live in Luton and Preston respectively, Willie Walsh remains in Australia, Martin in Dublin and Davy Walsh in South Devon.

Davy Walsh, still regarded by old timers as the best of all the Ireland centre forwards - a man who hit 75 goals in his last season for Linfield before moving to West Brom in 1946 - has Tom Finney's shirt to remind him of the day when he and his teammates brushed sporting immortality.

"Of all the days, good and bad, we had in football, this is the one which sticks in the memory," he says. "I guess those of us still around are proud to say `yes, we were there'."