McCarthy deserves to be back at the top
The IRA, Sinn Féin, The Workers’ Party, Aldershot, North Korea, Moscow, money forging and more – all the boxes are ticked over the course of a lengthy interview conducted by Jason O’Toole.
And then, right at the end, after Mac Giolla has railed against what he calls his “pet hate” – a perceived media consensus – comes this little zinger out of left field::
“Look at RTÉ. The consensus means that Roy Keane was right – that must mean that (Mick) McCarthy was wrong. McCarthy cannot be mentioned now on RTÉ. They’re still showing Jack Charlton’s years, never the McCarthy years. McCarthy brought his team to the World Cup. Keane refused to play for his country – he was a disaster. Not one of the World Cup matches in McCarthy’s era have been shown on RTÉ – not one of them. I would love to see again that great match with Germany when Robbie Keane got the equalising goal and the match when Damien Duff scored one of the most ridiculous accidental goals. He walked slowly over to his support base and bowed three times in pure Japanese fashion. That was his celebration. That should be shown. Anyway, the consensus really drives me up the bloody wall.”
Well, talk about out of the mouths of babes and oul’ fellas...
Now, being but a lowly sports hack, I have no intention of getting bogged down here in a debate about media conspiracy. And still less do I have any desire to re-ignite the great Saipan war which, as the tenor of MacGiolla’s remarks makes clear, still has the capacity to enrage, even after the protagonists themselves have partaken of the bread of peace.
But it seems to me that MacGiolla is onto something when he suggests that Ireland’s 2002 World Cup finals campaign and Mick McCarthy’s achievement in taking his team to the brink of the quarter-finals, rarely get proper recognition these days.
Partly, I think, that’s to do with a quirk of fate – the perceived similarities between Giovanni Trapattoni and Jack Charlton, both men of a certain age and, as John Aldridge pointed out in Dublin this week, sharing a my-way-or-the-highway approach to football management. That sense of history repeating – even down to the backdrop of recession – is surely one of the reasons why a friend of mine has just been commissioned to write a book revisiting the Charlton era. It’s also why, when people now talk optimistically of qualification for South Africa, the notion of a return to “the glory years” is invariably shorthand for the heady period from 1988 to 1994.
At times, it’s as if the World Cup in Japan and Korea seven years ago has been shunted to the sidelines.
Of course, to a large extent you have to blame Saipan and the ugly shadow it cast over subsequent events. Yet, it can be argued that, regardless of the rights and wrongs of the dispute, Saipan served only to make Ireland’s progress in the finals all the more laudable.
Among those of us who were in Izumo when the squad made landing on the Japanese mainland, I can’t imagine a single one could have confidently predicted the successes to come on the field of play over the coming two weeks. At that point, the whole squad seemed to be thoroughly demoralised and the entire Irish World Cup project virtually on its knees, as Roy Keane’s departure – and rumoured return – entirely hijacked preparations for the opening game against Cameroon in just a few days’ time.
McCarthy-sceptics had already long-since decided that Ireland had only reached the finals anyway because of Keane’s outstanding performances in the qualifying campaign. But what came to pass in Japan and Korea, in the most testing of circumstances, was proof both that the Irish team was no one-man band and that Mick McCarthy was a manager with the right stuff.
As Tomas Mac Giolla notes, the performance against Germany in particular, culminating in Robbie Keane’s memorable and thoroughly deserved equalising goal, was one that deserves to be on a permanent loop, an enchanted Irish football night in Ibaraki that was at least the equal of those celebrated days in Stuttgart, Hanover, Genoa and New Jersey – and one founded on a better quality of football to boot.
OF course, heartbreak was to come with Ireland’s exit in the penalty shoot-out against Spain, but here too was a performance to savour in a match which FIFA subsequently voted the game of the tournament. (By the way, on the subject of revisionism – Steve Staunton’s unhappy spell as Ireland manager should never be allowed to eclipse the memory of his inspirational performances for his country in the very twilight of his career in Japan and Korea).
Yet, even then, Mick McCarthy couldn’t buy a break with his shrillest critics. One of the more persistent myths arising from the game against Spain is that the manager hadn’t organised for his players to practice penalties in the build-up.
Bizarre, because, as a reporter on the ground, I vividly remember McCarthy fielding questions on precisely that subject in his eve of match press conference in Seoul – and, indeed, drawing knowing laughs from the assembled media when he reported that Damien Duff even found taking them in training too nerve-wracking. Yet, to this day, you’ll find articles which continue to insist that Ireland failed to prepare for the shoot-out against Spain. Go figure.
Since 2002, Mick McCarthy has, as they say, seen the two days: down and out with Ireland, up and down with Sunderland. But now, he has once again proved his management fettle by taking Wolverhampton Wanderers up to the Premiership. Even with Kevin Doyle on board, you can’t help suspecting that it will be a long and testing season for the boys from the Black Country. But it’s one of the reasons to look forward to the new Premier League campaign that Mick McCarthy – a good man and a good manager – is back at the top, where he belongs.
