Little to stir the blood in lifeless affair
Next up, an epic journey to Tbilisi.
If you have kicked every ball and cheered every goal Ireland scored (all nine of them) then fair play. If you’re one of those who turned down the page somewhere and forgot to pick it back up then don’t fret. You’re far from alone.
Last November, 37,100 tickets were sold for the first game of the Martin O’Neill/Roy Keane era — or so the FAI told us. By last night, the number had plummeted to 14,376, although the actual numbers present were even lower.
Oman were only partly to blame.
After all, it’s less than a decade since another team from a distant part of the planet with players that nobody recognised — China, in that case — lost to Ireland at the old Lansdowne Road in front of a crowd of 35,222 people.
It’s not them, clearly. It’s us.
The A-list of actors in the dugout was only ever going to hold the attention of an already wavering public for so long and the run of lacklustre results and well-discussed failure to add to the existing talent pool of players has filleted most of the early optimism.
Which isn’t to say that O’Neill hasn’t cast his net sufficiently wide. Only once before has an Irish manager had the luxury — or maybe that should be penance — of such a long lead-in before his first competitive game.
Mick McCarthy also had to wade his way through eight games, in his case across 17 months in the mid-1990s, before breaking his duck proper with a 5-0 defeat of Liechtenstein in a World Cup qualifier in Eschen.
McCarthy auditioned 30 players across those eight fixtures.
O’Neill has run the rule over five more in the same number of games with the experimentation continuing through to last night with Shay Given, Darron Gibson and Robbie Brady all featuring for the first time under the latest gaffer.
There may be few new caps among them, and Given’s return could be taken as symbolic of a squad that stood still since his retirement after Euro 2012, but is there an Irish player worth his salt who can say they haven’t had their shot?
Rob Elliott and Shane Duffy have been awarded their first caps. Guys like Wes Hoolahan, Alex Pearse, Stephen Quinn and Anthony Pilkington, though blooded first by Giovanni Trapattoni, have already featured more often under O’Neill.
Where it leaves us as we stand on the threshold of a new qualifying campaign is another thing as friendlies have little or no relevance to the real thing and last night’s diversion bore as much relation to Georgia on Sunday as a Wine Gum does a fine Chablis.
With three days to go until Tbilisi even O’Neill is probably unsure as to how well his team is attuned to, and able for, the tests that lie ahead. What we know is there will be ‘what ifs?’ when it is all done and dusted.
Trapattoni’s tenure was always dogged by expressions of wistfulness over the absence or under-utilisation of men such as Hoolahan and Andy Reid and the voluntary disappearance from the scene for a spell of Gibson.
There are no such peccadilloes on which to hang our woes this time. Every man who could has been addressed and assessed in Gannon Park out in Malahide and in five different stadiums since last November.
This is it. Ireland’s full hand is about to be played.
