Equaliser changes everything for Trap
You can imagine the whooping and the hollering from the beanbags around the whiteboard next to the fussball table in the breakout area at Nike HQ.
Nailed it, guys! Awesome.
The ad copy that saluted Tiger Woods’ return to the top of golf’s charts did everything Nike wanted.
It jerked the needle of a moral compass or two and reeled in the resultant trawl of indignant headlines. And it drew a line in the sand trap Tiger spun into off that fire hydrant three and a half years ago.
We’ve done contrition. We’ve done recovery. We’ve done weird, beyond-the-grave scolding by dad. From now on, Tiger is simply taking care of business.
He is back on message.
As taglines go, it probably just edges out Can You See The Sky? — the other five-word product of marketing minds that has reverberated all around us in recent weeks — recited by a big man in a field with a jumper slung round his shoulders. A man rebooting modems and fashion in one stroll.
But when Quinny was on Sky on Tuesday night, the big man who will always find a silver lining could see only clouds. And an extraordinary thing happened.
Our greatest diplomat, our prince of plámás, the finest bridge-builder since Joseph Strauss — this man said strong and harsh things.
“A great performance taken away from them by ineptitude on the sideline.”
Later, Quinny told Sky Sports News it was time for Giovanni Trapattoni to depart his post. This wasn’t another Dunphy rant. Coming from Quinny, it has to be taken as a bellwether statement of a country’s mood.
Is it fair? Did enough change on Tuesday between 91:24 — Paul Green showing composure on Trap’s touchline to turn out of trouble and roll possession to the arriving James McCarthy — and 91:55, exultant Austrians lingering in a cuddle of relief under the Havelock Square dip?
Wouldn’t a win have taken care of everything? The untidy football. The curious substitution. The kamikaze late sit-in. Everything.
Maybe.
When Trapattoni arrived amongst us nearly five years ago, he told us, on day one, that footballers are delicate people. “So I am going to have to work on their psychology.”
A little later he warned against the dangers of knowing our place. “Never accept the established order in international football. When you go to play Italy, don’t believe they are better than you before a ball has been kicked.”
The other message has long been tweaked and the new version got another outing the other night.
We are Ireland. You think we are Germany or England? As a statement of intent, all the blue sky thinking round all the whiteboards in the world would struggle to sell it.
Funnily enough, England looked a lot like us on Tuesday night. “Inevitable. The goal that had been coming,” groaned Clive Tyldesley when Montenegro finally took advantage of another second-half retreat.
But then England have a manager who has busily dampened expectations since the moment he took the job. Under Roy Hodgson, it is no longer England Expects, but mainly England Expects The Worst.
91:25 — McCarthy has five yards of space all around him. He could open his body and slide one 10 yards inside where Glenn Whelan is alone. Whelan would have an age to find James McClean and an open prairie towards the sanctuary of the corner flag.
But whatever about England, we are not Germany. We are Ireland. McCarthy is on message. He panics. He does the thing that would, ordinarily, be least natural to him. He lofts a hopeful one down the line. To nobody. Heinz Lindner collects. We never really get it back again; the ball or hope.
Trap rages on the line. Winning might have taken care of everything for now. A draw like this puts it all back on the table.
