It’s simply a question of faith
I just didn’t have the stomach for it. As far as fights worth staging go, this one, for me, ranked behind even the tantalising prospect of Harrison-Chisora.
In fact, there was much to admire in the way Giovanni Trapattoni was prepared to slip out of his job without any fight in the same minimalist manner he has performed it all along, bringing to mind the antics of Peter Gibbons in the slacker classic Office Space — the guy who grew more unsackable in the eyes of his superiors the less interest he took in his job.
Whatever his critics argue, perhaps the most impressive aspect of Trap’s reign so far has been his stubborn refusal to become involved in the Saturday afternoon charade.
Sitting in the cold at English football grounds, studying Irish substitutes do their warm-ups, undoubtedly with Roy Hodgson beside him, wrecking his head with news of who would be left out of the next England squad.
You can’t outsource that work to Frank Stapleton, insists Dunphy and company. If it’s work that keeps Frank out of the commentary box, why the hell not? Instead, then, of staring into the middle distance every Saturday until a respectable amount of time has passed — 78 minutes is the going rate, I believe — Trap watches a few DVDs in the comfort of his own home, or at least pretends to, all the while saving himself hours of thinking time, unburdened by bad coffee and the distractions of a strange man.
But in a nation in thrall to busy work, to appearances, this is a capital crime.
Don’t get me wrong. None of this is to muster much in the way of defence or enthusiasm for Trap continuing in his lucrative part-time gig.
Of course he has disrespected us, disappointed us and, through his loose talk, depleted us.
And he patently doesn’t rate us or trust us. But then, have we ever trusted ourselves? As far as we are concerned, the intrinsic lack of trust we have always shown our footballers invariably manifests itself in one way; hoofing.
To watch, before the Faroe Islands game, John Giles show us Keiren Westwood launch, time and again, possession back to Germany like he was dumping rubbish over a neighbour’s fence, was a depressing slice of déjà vu that echoed any time you choose in the last quarter century, at least, of Irish football.
It was a spectacle only matched by the sight of an entire team showing the goalkeeper their backs like John Eales’s Wallabies before the haka. They were trounced too, if I remember right.
I spent a bit of time this week with Trap’s book; Coaching High Performance Soccer. In it, is plenty of stuff about double-teaming, counter-pressing and geometric passing. But nowhere is there a paean to the promise inherent in hoofing the ball the length of the field.
It seems this is something Trap has come up with just for us. Sticking to what we know. Rather than sacking him, perhaps we should be apologising for what we’ve got him mixed up in.
Our English chums do a considerable amount of hoofing too, though perhaps not as much as they used to. In another sense, however, the trust they place in their footballers has never been lower.
In an extraordinary document released by the FA this week, English footballers were handed perhaps their greatest ever indignity; a code of conduct prescribing suitable behaviour while on international duty.
While Paddy can’t be trusted to collect the ball from his goalkeeper without causing some class of calamity, there is a long, long list of things you can’t leave to chance with George.
The nanny statement prohibits room service, discourages headphones, limits Twitter and, with all the condescension it can muster, allows a ‘sensible amount of time’ playing video games.
Little wonder our chums are continually disappointed when George is invited to think for himself on the pitch. For our part, sadly, we rarely ask that much of Paddy.
Now that we don’t trust Trap to do his job either, the good news is he may well make an appearance at an English football ground this weekend, just to keep us quiet.
Will what he sees allow him trust some of our players more? Time will tell.
