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Breaking stories

Boys in green bear no resemblance to heroes of yore

Monday, June 04, 2012

By Michael Moynihan

When it comes to ranking my shameful confessions, this one doesn’t quite make it to the top spot.

Jostling for attention there? Try the occasion I was sent to cover a Gaelic football game a couple of years ago. Early on I almost blurted out: “Why’s the keeper not taking the kick-out from the edge of the small square?” Another candidate for inclusion? The evening in Limerick when I sat down with Conor O’Shea and, as a warmer-upper, asked how he was enjoying life at the RFU.

“It was great but I’m gone out of there a year now,” was the reply (that was a long half-hour: O’Shea was kindness personified, but do you know how much sweat a man can shed in the aftermath of a gaffe like that?). No, this is not on that level, though given the context it’s up around there.

I have to confess I am not too familiar with the boys in green this time around. I do not think I could pick Keith Fahey out of a line-up. Darren O’Dea is a mystery to me and, sadly, seems destined to remain so. David Forde? No. Keiren Westwood? Not a hope.

When someone told me that Paul Green was called up late, I thought for a second they meant Peter Green, former Fleetwood Mac guitarist, a particularly bold move for Giovanni Trapattoni.

Well, even I understand there has been a vacancy in the squad for a decent guitar player ever since Andy Reid fell out of favour. But I do know Paul McShane, mostly because of his bold hairstyle: those reddish locks swept forward over the ears and down onto the cheeks like the cheekplates of a Roman gladiator.

And that’s the key to the whole thing as far as I’m concerned. Going back to the heyday of Jack’s Army, I feel part of the strong identity that squad forged with each other, and among the Irish public, derived from their individuality in the barber’s chair.

Andy Townsend and his errors with peroxide! Packie Bonner and the Alec-Baldwin-out-of-30-Rock side-crease! John Sheridan’s nifty sideburns! They embraced the thatch, and the thatch embraced them.

Tony Cascarino — a hairdresser in his youth, significantly — went on the record, and into some detail, on the necessity of dyeing your hair to look particularly youthful when trying to secure a new contract.

It’s hardly a surprise that the 1988-90 squads featured nary a Yordan Letchkov nor a Bobby Charlton in the hair stakes among them. Charlton you probably know, but Letchkov was the smooth-pated Bulgarian who headed a superb match winner against Germany in 1994. That was the tournament of hairstyles, truly: Henrik Larsson’s lush dreadlocks, and Roberto Baggio, who eventually became known as the Divine Ponytail.

Diana Ross, who missed a penalty in the opening ceremony (almost said ‘lavish’ opening ceremony there) lay down the challenge with her luxuriant tresses and was it ever taken up! Even the Ireland squad of that period featured plenty of tonsorial highlights: Tommy Coyne’s honey-shaded quiff, Stephen Staunton’s resolute, unconquerable red spikiness, while Roy Keane’s early suede-headed efforts marked him out even then as a man apart.

Perhaps I’ve been too long out of the game, or semi-detached at least, but unfortunately monotonous sensibility that seems to be the way the game is going — above the ears, at least.

The all-conquering Spanish side of recent years do not feature anyone with an inspirational bazzer; the closest to novelty is Fernando Torres’ cheap-looking rinse (supply your own punchline, please).

The Spaniards may play an attractive passing game, but none of them would inspire a 13-year-old boy to head to the local chop shop with a Match Attax card and say: “I’ll have one of those” (when you consider the best player in their domestic league is an Argentinian whose lumpy clump of tangles would be laughed at openly by a 13-year-old boy, that’s hardly surprising). Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. If the Irish lads haven’t got the maturity for international-class hairstyles at this stage of their careers, they won’t develop them any time soon.

The one exception I make is for Robbie Keane. You might expect a well-travelled man like that to branch out with something more eye-catching, until you realise he shares a dressing room — occasionally — with David Beckham, who never met a hair disaster he didn’t try to get on trend personally.

Keep that short back and sides, Robbie. Sometimes less is more.

* contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx

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