River deep, mountain high

IS it really only seven days since Cyprus? It feels more like seventy.

A snappy compilation of sound-bites from the past week might run something like this: Stan must go! Bring back Brian! Stan must go! Bring back Stan! Delaney must go! Bring back...Fran!?!

Well, maybe not, but when a feeding frenzy takes hold, the plate can end up piled high with severed heads, even if no-one is entirely sure what they’ll have for seconds.

Doubtless there are those inside Merrion Square and the Irish team who would like nothing better now than to see the entire Irish press corps dressed as the cast of the Muppets and lined up behind a big table on which sits a huge, steaming dish of humble pie. (And, if it ever comes to it, can I just say for the record that I want to be the mighty Animal, the celebrity drummer who made Keith Moon appear reserved).

There’s no doubt that a lot of the media coverage since last Saturday was hysterical. The Muppet stuff, by the way, was simply naff, as cliched as it was out of date and badly done. Some of the coverage — like the attempts to contact Steve Staunton’s parents — was indefensible. And some of it was almost indistinguishable from fiction.

On Tuesday, one paper carried the front page headline, ‘Stan Blows His Top’. Seeing it on the news-stands that morning, my first gut-wrenching reaction was that I’d somehow missed the previous day’s biggest story. Once again, it looked like I was out of the running for that elusive Pulitzer.

Quickly scanning the piece with heart in mouth, I was initially baffled to see that it was a report of a training ground briefing in Malahide at which I had actually been in attendance. This was even worse. With my usual exquisite sense of news values, I must somehow have left moments before Staunton went berserk, presumably wrestling the tabloid Miss Piggy impersonator to the ground and beating the head off him/her with a training cone.

But, no, as it turned out, I’d missed nothing. Where many of us had expected the under pressure Staunton to restrict his comments to a curt injury update, we had actually been pleasantly surprised to find that he also responded to questions about the criticism he was shipping and the value of the crisis team talk he had called in Limassol. It was only when he was asked what he had said to the team in that meeting that Staunton abruptly brought the briefing to a close, saying that the details would remain behind closed doors. And with that, he left to join his squad.

This, apparently, was the Irish manager not just ‘blowing his top’ but ‘storming off’. All one can say is that you’d have to fear for the sensitive writer or sub if they ever run in to Fergie with his hairdryer set to ‘thermonuclear’.

From Staunton’s perspective, a lot of the back-page coverage must have felt pretty wounding too but, to his credit, he maintained a dignified front all through the week, declaring more than once that he could take it on the chin.

He must also have known that the fright night in Cyprus had made the hostility inevitable. Even those inclined to give a rookie manager the benefit of time in which to get things right, were left with little alternative but to talk of looming deadlines in the four fraught days between Nicosia and Dublin. For sure, some of the criticism was ferocious but, in truth, no amount of vitriol could have been as damning as the simple, stunning scoreline, Cyprus 5 Republic of Ireland 2.

Which is why so much was riding on Wednesday night, from Staunton’s immediate future to the bleak prospect of a game against Wales being played at a semi-deserted Croke Park. And it’s also why there was so much relief and even joy at the transformed performance against the Czechs. And not just in the stands, where the Lansdowne roar was rediscovered after a long absence. It may come as a shock to Merrion Square but, in the press box, there were a few fists clenched in solidarity when Kevin Kilbane’s shot hit the back of the net. Believe it or not but, in the main, sports reporters prefer writing upbeat stories too, especially where their own country is concerned.

YET, it would be foolish to suggest that all the reservations about Steve Staunton’s management have gone away, you know. Wednesday certainly answered the question about whether he could extract a passionate, committed performance from his team — and one characterised by shape and organisation and no little skill too — but what the manager needs to show now is that he can bring consistency and a learning curve to the role.

And there’s a difference between being consistent and being stubborn. A youth policy is all well and good but no plan that isn’t adaptable can hope to cope with adversity. Hence, the need for Staunton to fully recognise the importance of Lee Carsley, at least for the rest of this campaign. Carsley was the glue that held the midfield together on Wednesday. No-one ever claimed that he was another Roy Keane but, on this sort of form, he can do a pretty acceptable impersonation, using the ball simply and well, retaining possession, crunching into the tackle and scurrying here and there to sniff out danger before it had a chance to develop into a real threat.

And while Staunton talks of match experience being vital for the young ‘uns, there’s surely nothing to be gained by exposing them to the risk of a bad defeat and everything to be gained by the rookies learning from wiser heads beside them on the pitch.

Staunton’s managerial graph so far has been positively Himalayan: up for Sweden, a sudden drop for Chile, a dizzying plunge for Holland, back up again for Germany, rock bottom for Cyprus and, now, at something of a towering peak following one of the better nights in Lansdowne Road in recent years.

What we all crave now is the nice, even plateau of San Marino back to back, and the time for Steve Staunton to breathe a little and make some serious decisions about his best starting 11. How does that jolly old tune go again?

‘It’s time to face the music, it’s time to light the lights.........................