Puerile pundits with scoring record far worse than team’s

DURING the week Bertie Ahern made an extraordinary admission about costing the State a fortune.

He was referring to his testimony to the Moriarty tribunal.

“That is over and done with,” he said, “and I will not answer any more questions because I have answered enough questions about signing blank cheques, and I am not doing it any more.”

Paul Keogh asked: “Will the Taoiseach say if he did it?”

“Did I sign blank cheques?”, Bertie asked rhetorically. “I signed loads of them for all kinds of organisations and clubs for years. I have given it up now.”

“These are changing times,” Bernard Durcan interjected.

“It cost the State a fortune to find me guilty,” Bertie added.

Was he bragging or complaining? This extraordinary admission was largely ignored as the media went off after a soft target in Steve Staunton. This was as perverse as it was unfair.

The fact that Ireland only defeated tiny San Marino with a last-gasp goal is being depicted as Irish soccer’s worst humiliation. Was winning by just one goal really worse than losing 7-1 to Czechoslovakia in a World Cup qualifier?

Who would ever have thought anybody could get excited about beating San Marino? Most people do not even know where it is.

The media were confidently predicting a rake of goals, so one can only imagine the reaction if Ireland had actually lost. Those who went to the game with a printed banner calling for the removal of FAI chief John Delaney were going to unfurl it no matter what happened.

Supporters who travelled expecting the team to win comfortably were understandably disappointed.

Post-match comments from people leaving the game were laced with words like ‘rubbish’, ‘disgrace’, ‘shocking’, ‘brutal’ and ‘absolutely brutal’. The airways have been overflowing with similar invective ever since.

Who said Ireland was going to run away with it, anyway? Are they the same people who are now savaging Staunton, Delaney and everybody else because they got their predictions wrong?

In a way, Jack Charlton is responsible for all the uproar this week. He brought Irish soccer to a level we had only dreamed about previously, and we have had unrealistic expectations ever since. But some of the same people who are rubbishing Steve Staunton were just as bitter about Charlton. Even when Big Jack had Ireland completing at the highest level, those people were calling for his removal. Eamon Dunphy was just as hysterical during the 1990 World Cup after Ireland only drew with Egypt. Yet Ireland went on to reach the quarter-final in Rome, just one week before the final was played in the same stadium.

Four years later Dunphy savaged Charlton for under-achieving when the team only reached the last 16 of the World Cup staged in the US.

Yet Dunphy and the other puerile prognosticators never gave him due credit for reaching the last eight in 1990, or for coming within minutes of knocking out the eventual winners and qualifying for the European Cup semi-final in 1988.

After reaching the last 16 of the 1994 World Cup, some of the media demanded that Charlton be dumped, even though the Irish team enjoyed what was arguably its most successful year ever in going to Holland and Germany and beating both countries. Of course, the bilious begrudgers say those were only friendlies, but before Charlton came on the scene the only victories our soccer supporters had to celebrate away from home were friendlies.

The press spent over 30 years reliving the glory of what was reportedly this country’s greatest away performance — beating England in a friendly at Goodison Park in 1949. And that was the great England team which was knocked out in the first round of the following year’s World Cup in Brazil by losing not just to Spain but also to the USA.

Some people will even remember that the captain of that American team, Johnny McIlvenny, spent the best years of his career starring with Waterford United in the League of Ireland before moving to England to play with mighty Headington United! The Irish victory in 1949 pales into insignificance when compared with the wins in 1994 over Holland and Germany, followed by what was arguably our most memorable soccer victory — beating Italy in New Jersey.

That was something no other team could do in USA ’94. Italy went on to the final and only lost out to Brazil on penalties.

The experts on RTÉ blamed Charlton for picking the wrong team and using the wrong tactics.

THERE is no way of knowing if the tactics advocated by critics after the game would have been any better, but we can evaluate the pre-match predictions of RTÉ’s three-man panel in 1994.

They made a total of 12 predictions for Ireland’s four games.

As there are only three ways a game can go — win, lose or draw — on the law of averages they should have got at least four right, even if they knew nothing about soccer. Yet that panel of experts contrived to get 11 of their 12 predictions wrong. Only Joe Kinnear got one right when he predicted Ireland would beat Italy. So much for the experts.

Eamon Dunphy called for Charlton’s resignation at that time because he had underachieved with Ireland’s “magnificent squad of players” which he described as “one of the most formidable in Europe”.

It may have been a formidable team, but only six of the 22 squad members had been able to command a regular first team place in a premier division side throughout the previous season.

That Charlton was able to build a formidable team in the circumstances was a testament to his managerial skills. Yet Dunphy and some of the same bunch of media cranks have been kicking up another fuss this week. Before Charlton took over the Irish team, we had never beaten Northern Ireland.

Everyone who was old enough probably remembers the horrifying atmosphere in which the final qualifying game against Northern Ireland was played in Belfast, but we should remember the previous game against the North in Lansdowne Road. That day in his pre-match analysis, Dunphy predicted a tight, dour match with few if any goals.

“It could well be a draw,” he said. “Northern Ireland will be formidable opposition.” He criticised Charlton’s selection of both Andy Townsend and young Steve Staunton that day.

By half time Ireland had scored three goals and Townsend and Staunton had one each. At that point Dunphy had to admit his pre-match remarks were “nonsense”. But he also said something else. “Unfortunately,” he added, “I’m not going to get my draw bet up”. That “unfortunately” sounded like Dunphy did not want Ireland to win.

Let’s face it, the team can do without that kind of passionate supporter.

He declared on Prime Time this week that the appointment of Staunton was a “very, very stupid thing to do”.

The manager lined out for Ireland more than 100 times and played in three different World Cup finals, yet Dunphy says he has “no understanding of the game”.

He talked the same kind of emotional twaddle about Charlton, too, but he was pathetically wrong, and there is nothing in his record to suggest his judgement is any better now.

Steve Staunton may not be able to build another formidable team like Jack Charlton, but he does deserve a chance.