Tipp have hope where England have none
Two short goodbyes filled a long week all by themselves. Lar’s took an hour at the Ryans’ house in Clonoulty. You’d imagine the good room was used, tea had, a Christmas tin of USA shook for survivors, a red head scratched.
Fabio took his leave somewhere in the oak-panelled bowels of the place where he gave his first lesson. One-nil. Capello, ’87. Too good for them then as well. On Wednesday, he kept calm and acted like a gentleman, they tell us, as if fearing John Foreigner might have let himself down. But when the call on John Terry’s captaincy was made without his input, Fabio didn’t need a translator to get the message. Welcome outstayed.
Outside, when the two meetings were over and news found every corner like spilt milk, chalk and cheese gave their verdicts.
Limerick could look in Kilkenny windows, so badly was Tipp deflated. Broken men and women drew curtains, put on the 2010 All-Ireland same as they always did that time of the evening, but allowed Ger Canning give way to Radiohead’s Exit Music on the stereo.
The English, on the other hand, were giddy. They had long ago decided there was no more they could learn from the man who once made Cruyff, Romario and Stoichkov spectators at the greatest ever show of strength.
The English had arrived, inevitably, back at the same place they always end up. The English wanted an Englishman. From there, regression was swift. Barry Fry was soon loose on Sky pulling the blinds on their latest dark age. “We’ve had enough of these foreigners. They ain’t got no passion, they ain’t got no commitment.”
Fry’s was just the froth on top of a dead pond of consensus. For Harry was free. And soon all of this would be his.
But Harry’s luck has run out. Because the players England have will always take them so far, but not beyond. At least, by looking beyond their borders, the FA had acknowledged a problem, showed it was open to new ideas.
Capello saw well their limitations and tried to force conservatism on the bulldog spirit. It went badly wrong for him in South Africa but against Spain lately the impression grew that they might frustrate more than their own this summer.
All out the window, now. Harry will be expected to put an arm around them and say what he said to Pavlyuchenko the first evening he arrived at Spurs. “Just f****** run around a bit.” Handbrake off, they’ll have a go. But they’ll go nowhere.
They are back in the place that gave them Kevin Keegan and Steve McClaren. There is no hope left for these people.
Tipp, on the other hand, may well have more reason to hope that they yet realise.
The English and Tipperary sporting publics are more alike than the latter tends to acknowledge. Of course the English talk louder and are fonder of complicated haircuts, but a certain arrogance is shared. Things would have to get very bad, for instance, before Tipp people countenanced an outside manager.
But if England can’t stop themselves repeating the mistakes of the past, Lar, whatever his reasons, may have just given Tipp the jolt they need to arrest a familiar cycle.
Whenever Tipp have won an All-Ireland in recent decades, the pattern has been the same. Beaten the year after to regret, but not alarm. A dynasty postponed. Entitlement is packed for another year when defeat again sparks blame, bloodletting, chaos and decline.
There had been a sense — among Tipp supporters at least — that last September’s disappointment was an aberration, an inexplicable no-show that couldn’t be repeated. Lar, for one, could never be as quiet again.
If it leaked into players that the same effort would bring a different outcome this year, Tipp are back on the old ring-road. Now, with this news, men like Noel McGrath and Seamus Callinan know there is slack to be taken up. Management, too, must think again. They can’t, for instance, hurl as predictably as they did against Dublin last year and know Lar will snaffle 1-3.
Just by taking stock, Tipp can find more inside themselves. Then, if Lar returns, they are even better placed. But it’s not their only hope. Like everywhere else, the darkest hour in Clonoulty is before the dawn.
