Series of scandals creating pressure

THE manager hoiked up his anorak and looked wearily at the shambles unfolding on the pitch.

There was no shouting. No gesticulation. No finger-pointing. No making sure of positions. It was the vacant stare he used when he knew that he and his team were taking a beating.

Sometime beforehand he had eyed the substitutes bench and saw nothing. This was it. This was the hand he was dealt. And he knew deep down it might no longer be good enough.

Yep, he would admit in the post-slaughter interviews, the team had been below PPARS.

Bertie Ahern was at the game on Wednesday night. Not to get too Father Trendy, there are some handy parallels between Ahern and the hapless Brian Kerr. As he absorbed the eerie silence that was the fan’s valedictory tribute to Kerr, Ahern may have got intimations of his own future demise. Leaders always say (as Haughey did) they want to go at the time of their own choosing. It never works out like that. Ahern has been booed and heckled by fans before. But one day in the future he will face something worse, the awful wall of silence. There will be no dramatics, nothing to say. It’s as if everybody will have copped on by osmosis. It will be time to go.

Fine Gael has hit a rich seam with its concerted attack on bockety ICT projects and the outrageous money wheelbarrowed out to consultants.

In themselves, the disclosures this week about bellyflop projects were no big deal. But piggybacking on the PPARS debacle, the party knew they were onto a clear winner with the media. At times, Enda Kenny’s performances at leaders’ questions are so wooden he makes a closed coffin look lively. But he had a good week. And the other half of the Mullingar duet chimed in with his Greek chorus, calling it the worst scandal in seven years for the Government.

Was it? A couple of FFers accepted this week that it was bad, almost as bad as the Hugh O’Flaherty debacle 18 months shy of the 2002 General election. Then, Fianna Fáil’s opinion poll showings plummeted to 28%; and a couple of nervous TDs came up with doomsday predictions.

Some of them are now saying: Look what happened then. The party rode out the storm and crested home in the election. We’ll weather this one and bounce back.

But it’s different now. Five years on is five years older, wiser. But also wearier.

Every FF handler you speak to carps on about the opposition’s failure to come up with any alternative policies of its own. Doh! That’s what oppositions do. They do not propose. They oppose. Do you think when Brian Cowen and John O’Donoghue were sledging the Rainbow Government good-oh in 1996 that they had any intention in the world of showing their own hand? Not a chance!

Fianna Fáil, in particular, are in a bit of a bind. They will be three or four seats down before a vote is cast this time around because of constituency changes. Funnily, Fine Gael (because it was so badly filleted) and Sinn Féin (the James Dean factor) will be offering the intangibles of youth and energy. FF will have few new candidates and can’t look to any re-branding or makeover.

Bertie looks around at his squad and sees how bereft of choice he is. Of the backbenchers, only a handful are ministerial material - Brian Lenihan, Pat Carey, Barry Andrews, Billy Kelleher and one or two others.

The haymaker the Government took five years ago on O’Flaherty took place at a time where there was no opposition ready to pounce. The party was still on an upward curve back then, despite that temporary little setback.

No more. FF will still market Ahern as its greatest asset but, as its lodestar, he has lost some lustre. Its starting 15 are beginning to show signs that the limbs are growing tired and the knocks are taking their toll.

And because of that the next election will become a battle between history and hope. The Government are already giving us long history lessons - since 1997, we have gone from being the poor man of Europe etc. But as Brian Kerr learned this week, there’s no point in relying on past glories when you are no longer able to offer the same hope for the future.

The day when this wise old dog has had his may be closer than we all think.