Groundog day

I KNOW we’re all supposed to be living in the global village nowadays but on these international football trips you can find yourself locked into a small world hermetically sealed on all four sides by the white line.

So snippets of news arrive from home and just get mashed up beyond all recognition in the footie blender.

So all that stuff about Bertie and Manchester has blown up again, has it?

Oh yeah, apparently Keano was at that dinner and bunged him a job lot of prawn sandwiches. Right, and then Bertie promised Denis that he’d build the new national stadium at Bishopstown. And — this just in! — Fergie was at that dinner too but then there was a big falling out and apparently himself woke up one morning in St Luke’s with the head of Rock of Gibraltar on the pillow beside him.

Honest, heard it from the horse’s mouth.

Still, not to worry, Quinny will sort it all out, as usual.

And speaking of Drumaville… ah, fantasy politics — it beats fantasy football any day. Especially when the best that we can manage in the way of real life fireworks is The Great Lee Carsley Debate. No offence to the man — who, as we all know, is currently “on fire” at Goodison — but, as controversies go, it’s not quite in the Saipan bracket, is it? I mean, fantasise as we might, but it’s hard to picture Tommie sitting in front of the balding midfielder and asking, “But what about the children, Lee?”

Sorry about all that, kind reader, must be the sun. Or maybe it’s just that we’re back in Cyprus exactly one year on and it sometimes seems like we never left. Even the sight of Brian Kerr on the premises — he’s out here to co-commentate for TV3 this evening — only serves to reinforce the sense of déjà vu.

Is it really 12 months since the snappers were eyeing up an inoffensive ‘Exit’ sign in the media hotel here in Limassol as we all awaited the entrance of Kerr for his eve-of-match press conference? The embattled gaffer, the symbolic sign above the door, the perfect photo opportunity. It’s harsh but it’s how it goes — politicians would understand.

Nobody is linking Steve Staunton with the ‘Exit’ sign yet — well, nobody bar the usual suspects — but who’d have thought that just one year on from the sour, dying fall of the Kerr era, when the screech of knives being sharpened was the soundtrack of the day, that we’d find ourselves back in Limassol trailed by headlines like ‘Cyprus Or Bust’ and with the phrase “siege mentality” turning up in reports?

Look, here’s an idea. Why don’t we just take down that ‘Exit’ sign, carefully pack it away and ship it home to Ireland where, with all due ceremony, we can present it to the FAI. Then, if they like, they can put it up behind a protective screen on a wall in Merrion Square with a little hammer beside it and a sign reading ‘In Case Of Emergency Break Glass’. As yer man used to say, fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

In the meantime, and lest we forget, there’s the not insignificant matter of a certain football match to look forward to this very evening.

Staunton may bang the drum about a four-year plan but most football fans tend not to look beyond the next 90 minutes.

In fact, most football folk have trouble getting over the last 90 minutes, which is why the ghastly ghosts of Nicosia 2005 are still hovering about the place. There were many who were quick to proclaim the recent Dutch drubbing in Dublin as, officially, the worst Irish performance ever, rather overlooking the fact that it was a friendly game in which nearly half the first team was missing.

So, yes, it was brutal, but hardly meaningful in the longer term, and Stuttgart went a considerable way to repairing battered pride, even if a Germany victory was never seriously in doubt once they’d gone in front.

Nicosia last time was different. A penultimate World Cup qualifier with nearly all the big guns, bar Roy Keane, available, and yet the performance was about as shockingly chaotic as it could have been, Cyprus entitled to curse their luck — and Shay Given — for failing to register an historic victory by at least two clear goals.

Somehow, Stephen Elliott’s early strike was enough to push a stuttering World Cup campaign to the last game but, with Duffer crocked and Keano still out, the truth was that Ireland were on life support even before they took the field against the Swiss in Dublin.

And, with an entirely predictable no score draw, the visitors duly pulled the plug on Ireland’s World Cup, a couple of international careers and Brian Kerr’s reign as manager.

There have been few more depressing episodes in the Irish football story.

And no one was entitled to take any pleasure from the collapse of a campaign which had started so brightly and the demise of an international managerial career which, to say the least, had done the state of Irish football some service.

So 12 months on from our last trip out here, let’s hope that there are limits to the Groundhog Day experience. Questions about a rookie manager’s ability to do the right thing are entirely legitimate and it may be that, in due course, Staunton’s career as Irish boss will be judged, for good or ill, on his insistence on passing up on old hands and giving youth its chance.

But, remember, he is still only one competitive game into the fray. Four years, as Richard Dunne has said, is a long time. But then so is 90 minutes.

But one trusts, tonight, not too long.