What would Dave think?
And we haven’t even organised a communist dictatorship to scare him away.
Rory, international sportsman of mystery, is nearly gone from us. Sure, he tried to keep us sweet during the week with fancy talk about being a global player, a golfing Unilever.
But we know, in our heart of hearts, that come Rio, Rory will be tweeting pictures of himself doing the Mobot.
And there must be a real danger now that 116 years of hurt — our long, emotional wait for golfing gold — will drag on unbearably.
Difficult times. Still, as we prepare to swaddle ourselves in the blue and yellow flag, get ready to line up beside our brothers and sisters from Bruges to Botevgrad for the pride of the continent we hold so dear, all we can be thankful for is that Rory, for now at least, hasn’t explored fully this ‘affinity’ he feels with the Americans.
There are blessings to be counted.
We’ve been spooked though, of that there can be no doubt. Perhaps that’s why we’ve felt the need to keep excusing another man who arrived among us via the swings and roundabouts of our peculiar political circumstances.
This week we’ve shown extraordinary indulgence for the nonsense of James McClean.
If anything, McClean’s stock — already bubbling on fully 25 reasonably competent Premier League appearances — has soared again since he shovelled his disrespectful petulance onto Twitter in the aftermath of his non-selection for our minimalist triumph in Astana.
Everywhere you looked, there was only sympathy for the embarrassment this giant of the game must have felt. Of course it was an effing joke.
His arrival on Tuesday provoked the night’s biggest cheer. “He’ll tweet when he wants,” sang some of the faithful.
Is this really what we’ve become? In the end, it took Martin O’Neill to point out how out of order McClean had been.
My own tolerance ebbs further with every page turned in Dave Langan’s new book, Running Through Walls.
Once upon a time, a phone wasn’t something you pulled out of your pocket to vent your impatience. It was nailed to a wall and you waited and watched and willed it to ring. And it broke your heart when it didn’t.
Langan’s never rang before Euro ’88. Jack Charlton didn’t have his number to explain why he had been discarded after playing half the qualification matches. Drink and depression soon found his number all right.
Seven years earlier, Langan had agitated and pleaded and eventually insisted that he would be in Lansdowne Road to play for Ireland against France on the night his club Birmingham City faced Ipswich.
The 3-2 win remains one of our finest hours, but during the game, Langan suffered the knee injury that would sideline him for years and eventually ensure that he parted with football penniless, crippled and, for a time, homeless.
On the night, naturally, he ran it off.
If Langan had dealt with setbacks like McClean or the ‘disappointed’ Darron Gibson, he wouldn’t have accumulated the 26 caps he treasures.
He played just twice under John Giles, was never quite trusted, but always showed and won’t hear a bad word about Gilesy’s management.
“Johnny gave me my chance to play international football and I will always be grateful to him for that.”
Niall Quinn, who played with him briefly, appreciates the part Langan played in safely shepherding respect for the green through the generations.
“The honour and responsibility that Dave instilled in all of us certainly rubbed off on me. There were times during my international career when I would be called into a squad for some meaningless tournament at the end of the season and the manager would say that you did not have to travel over if you did not want to.
“But you would think back to Dave and think what would he do?”
Words that might profitably be etched on some young men’s smartphones.
Ultimately, I’d imagine we’ll survive the loss of Rory, if it comes. But players who believe football is another individual sport would be no loss at all.
