Tommy Martin: Carrying our hopes and dreams, Stephen Kenny begins his impossible job

Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny is interviewed ahead of a Republic of Ireland training session at Tehelné pole in Bratislava, Slovakia. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

If you want to properly prepare yourself for a big night of international football, I recommend watching An Impossible Job, the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall documentary about the late Graham Taylor’s failed attempt to lead England to the 1994 World Cup.

The film is most famous for Taylor’s peculiar dialect of managerspeak, with phrases like ‘Do I not like that?’ and ‘Can we not knock it?’ entering the vernacular for a time. The access enjoyed by director Ken McGill, unimaginable today, picked up Taylor’s every exasperated utterance as his team floundered. These were in turn parroted to comic effect by assistants Phil Neal and Lawrie McMenemy, portraying the trio as a sort of helpless chorus to the on-field tragicomedy.