Byrne’s return heralds end of Irish cold war

AFTER the cold war involving the manager, the players and the media which darkened the final days of the Brian Kerr era, the thaw of the past week was as welcome as it was out of sync with the prevailing weather conditions.

Vastly improved player accessibility in the team hotel in Portmarnock on Monday was followed the next day by the unlikely sight of Robbie Keane chatting amiably with his erstwhile meeja tormentors, the new captain insisting that what was past was past and henceforth we must all concentrate on working together towards a more fruitful and harmonious future. Or words to that effect.

Of course, it didn’t take long before the limits of the new spirit of glasnost were starkly defined. When Keano capped his debut as skipper with a gleefully-taken goal against Sweden on Wednesday night, he eschewed his usual cartwheel in favour of racing to the dugout, where he first celebrated with Steve Staunton and was then gathered up in a manly embrace by returned physio Mick Byrne, before the rest of the team and bench joined in for a massive group hug.

And, then, disappointingly, he ran back onto the pitch.

I mean, what about us? At the very least I expected Keano to continue his celebrations in the style of a Wimbledon champion, by climbing over the hoardings and scaling the West Stand so that he could run through the press box giving all his new buddies a high five as he went.

I suppose we’ll just have to wait for the Easter egg.

Meantime, Keane’s choice of goal celebration was an unmistakable vote of confidence in Staunton’s decision to bring Byrne back into the fold. The veteran, silver-haired physio had been around the national team in the era of John Giles, but became something of a leading personality in his own right when the Jack Charlton bandwagon started rolling in earnest.

When the Irish players were getting off their team bus outside the stadium in Stuttgart ahead of the Euro 88 clash with England, it was Byrne who stared a television camera straight in the eye and, in broadest Dublinese, promised the audience back home: “We’ll do them for yiz.”

It was Byrne who extracted a promise from Charlton that the manager would arrange an audience with the Pope for the boys in green in the then unlikely event of Ireland reaching Rome in Italia 90.

When Kevin Moran once pulled up suddenly at an Irish training session, it was Byrne who broke the news to the waiting media: “Kev’s tweaked a hammer.”

And it was Byrne who, having treated a warrior on the field of play, would invariably trundle back around the perimeter of the pitch, one fist raised in solidarity with the terraces.

And then there was what went on behind the scenes.

Back before Italia 90, I interviewed Byrne for a Hotpress feature, in which he revealed that one of his roles as unofficial Minister for Morale under Charlton was to pick the movie which the squad would go to see on the day before a game in Dublin. He also explained that the players gave him marks out of 10 for his selection. The latest one, he said, had been The Hunt For Red October. So how had he rated on that one, I enquired.

“Not too bad, actually,” beamed Byrne. “I got a couple of nines.”

At this, he paused thoughtfully before adding, “Of course, that’d be the intellectuals - the rough and tumble gave it three.”

Outsiders don’t necessarily get it but you only have to hear the heartfelt testimonies of the likes of Damien Duff and Robbie Keane to appreciate the soul-stirring significance to the Irish players of having a man like Byrne about the place, someone whose role has as much do with spiritual as physical healing.

So Staunton seems to have made a shrewd move in recalling him, after he was exiled from the Irish camp under Brian Kerr. It’s also a sign of how the pendulum has swung back in general terms.

Post-Saipan, Genesis and then Roy Keane’s return, there was a general acceptance that Kerr’s appliance of science was part of a badly-needed new professionalism in Irish football.

However, as the wheels started to come off the World Cup campaign, the vibes from within the camp were interpreted to mean that something had been lost along the way - that indefinable x-factor generally dubbed ‘the craic’, perhaps - resulting in unhappy players producing unhappy performances on the field of play.

That may be far too simplistic an analysis - those who know him well would never describe Kerr as humourless - but there’s no doubt that Staunton has identified the restoration of bruised spirits as a key early target in his campaign.

Which is fine, so long as the baby doesn’t get thrown out with the bathwater, and the Kerr ideals - which won Roy Keane’s approval after all - aren’t all too eagerly abandoned.

What’s needed is what we might call the Doris Stokes approach - a happy medium (by the way, have you noticed that, curiously, there hasn’t been a peep out of the bould Doris since she “passed on.” She doesn’t write, she doesn’t phone...) But I digress. Certainly, this past week we have seen a productive blend of work, rest and play in the Irish senior team camp, culminating in Wednesday night’s infectious victory over Sweden.

As Staunton himself has noted, his team is still far from the finished article and, further down the line, there are bound to be lows to match the highs. And perhaps it’s only when the going gets tough that a manager and a team get to show their truest colours.

But, for now, it’s only right to celebrate the new production’s opening night, one which showcased old masters and exciting new talent, put plenty of bums on seats and earned enough rave reviews to suggest that this one could run and run.