Tommy Martin: To unite Irish football, Stephen Kenny must also cherish our past defiance

It would stand to reason that people might begin to lose interest in a team who can only be reliably expected to provide moments of real joy twice or three times a decade. Life is short. You went to Italy in a transit van? Great. We’ve got Netflix and Instagram and electric bicycles now

Thu, 09 Sep, 2021 - 07:00

Tommy Martin

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” F. Scott Fitzgerald might have said had he been among the crowd shuffling happily out of the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday night.

A miraculous goalkeeping stand and a late, exhilarating bombardment. Lansdowne Road shaking in appreciation. An incredulous opposition trudging away, ruefully reckoning it must be true what they say about those fighting Irish, for whom domination does not necessarily mean defeat.

A 1-1 draw, for God’s sake. Plus ça change.

For Stephen Kenny’s many critics, the new Republic of Ireland looked a lot like the old one. Ireland’s three goals this last week came from aerial assault rather than careful craft. At times, the team watched accomplished foreign forces fizz comfortably around them. They dragged themselves from losing positions in both home matches in grim defiance of the abyss.

1-1.

Twice in Mick McCarthy’s second, unlamented reign — against Switzerland and Denmark — Ireland survived humbling subjugation at home to roar back and snatch our favourite result in the game’s dying breaths.

And Robbie Keane in Ibaraki. And Alan McLoughlin in Belfast. And Kevin Sheedy in Cagliari.

Morning comrades! How goes the revolution?!

For Stephen Kenny’s many supporters, this was the same but different. The manager had ridden his luck, sure, but wasn’t he entitled to a measly serving of that by now? And wasn’t his blueprint there in the passages of constructive play glimpsed throughout the week, like a bountiful green shore to tired and hungry shipmates. And would any other manager have let loose Gavin Bazunu, Andrew Omobamidele, and Adam Idah, those fearless colts who came of age in time to be lifted aloft by the voices of the returning hordes?

Young, black, and Irish — how’s that for change?

A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest. It was a battering that was also a corner turned. Performances over results except when it’s results over performances. Make of that what you will.

About the one thing that unifies in what has been termed, with revealing portentousness, Irish Football’s Culture War, is the fact that people still obviously care. We found ourselves on the radio the afternoon after Azerbaijan, discussing the Sunday papers’ reaction to the game, trying to figure out some sensible ground between the promise of Portugal and the ‘oh God not this again’ of the previous day. My own private culture war, maybe.

The host described the Irish football team as “the biggest show in town” when it came to sport in this country, presumably to justify the lengthy airtime given to such naked existential pain. Then somebody texted in and said “yeah, the biggest show in town if you’re over 40. Nobody else cares any more. The Premier League is all that matters to them.”

Was this true, we wondered? Like home ownership and a taste for carvery lunches, is the Republic of Ireland soccer team only relevant to those still trying to party like it’s 1994? Had the team’s high days become too infrequent and the low days too low to retain the loyalty of the TikTok generation?

Put them under pressure? Ok Boomer.

But it’s hard to believe that the sheer volume of opinion about whether Stephen Kenny is a prophet or a charlatan does not suggest that the team is still reassuringly a matter of broad public concern. Given the intensity of the debate, this might be like saying the storming of the Capitol building in Washington DC showed a healthy level of political engagement. But still, all those who voiced their views cannot be receding of hairline and thickened of waist.

If so, it is the folk memory of golden summers and heady Lansdowne nights that stokes their fire, whether they remember them or not.

Many of Kenny’s supporters have taken the view that the past is a foreign country — they do things differently there. The days when Ireland stood toe-to-toe with the world’s best are viewed as a millstone, foisting the weight of unwarranted expectation on the inferior players of today. The old methods were failing and we can no longer send our best and brightest to English finishing schools. There is the zeal of the revolutionary, pulling down the statues to past heroes with their decadent values like long-ball and the granny rule.

Kenny has managed to earn himself a formidable army of enemies from the annals of Irish football. By saying he wanted to change the perception of us around the world, he stirred famous ghosts from their slumber. Most of the living previous managers and great players like Paul McGrath, Richard Dunne, and Andy Townsend voiced indignation at the suggestion that their toil was lumpen and crude in comparison with what was to come. What did he know of all the pitched battles fought and hard points won?

This was, undoubtedly, not Kenny’s intention. He simply voiced an aspirational vision of the future — but without paying due respect to the past. If he is to lead on from here, he needs to bring these things together. His message thus far, though it is a brave and necessary one, has not unified the Irish football public. As well as the new material, he needs to sing a tune we all know. You’ll never beat the Irish? That’ll do.

No great sporting revival takes place without reference to what went before. Irish football’s identity is wrapped up in those headrush days of defiance and bedlam. Kenny must discard what is not useful but use what, as Serbia learned, cannot be discarded.

We are borne back ceaselessly into the past, which, thankfully for Kenny, is what saved him last Tuesday night.