Will the real Ireland please stand up
Nope, it’s not ‘Stars In Their Eyes’, just a thought prompted by a recent visit to Croker for that nice little rugby warmer-upper before the Main Event at GAA headquarters next week.
In case you didn’t happen to hear about it, Ireland’s oval ball merchants comfortably disposed of their English counterparts and, afterwards, your undercover soccer correspondent was on hand to experience the fine media facilities as the rival coaches came in to face the press.
Brian Ashton was first up, his face glowing an even more radioactive red than usual.
The front row of English hacks went on the attack, firing one loaded question after another and helpfully offering the squirming Ashton a multiple-choice menu of ways to describe the defeat, ranging from “embarrassing” to “humiliating”.
The ordeal finally ended with someone asking if the scoreline was a fair reflection of the gulf between Irish and English rugby. Thinking more quickly on his feet than his players had on the pitch, Ashton replied: “Today it was”, before bolting for the exit.
That was the feeding frenzy. Then came the love-in. Eddie O’ Sullivan and Brian O’Driscoll slipped in to the top seats and the Irish front row went into action, massaging the boys to within an inch of their lives. How good was that, Eddie? How memorable was that, Brian?
And why not? The undercover soccer hack could only look on with envy. When was the last time that our kind had enjoyed such a perfect, tension-free date with the Irish manager, all wine and roses and pass the After Eight mints, dear. Brian Kerr and France v Ireland in Paris in 2004? Yep, it’s been a long time.
Okay, Steve Staunton’s first game in change — the 3-0 win over Sweden — had us purring, but that was a friendly and, as things have turned out, the mother of all false dawns. Since then, it’s been almost relentlessly depressing, with only a decent performance away to Germany and a good showing at home to the Czechs to lift the prevailing gloom. And still those games yielded only one point from six.
Now, even the most routine media duty has become something of a minefield. Thursday’s squad announcement in Dublin was notable for Staunton’s claim — in reply to how he was coping with all the criticism — that he’d heard rumours that he wasn’t going to show up at all for the scheduled press conference.
Frankly, this came as news to the assembled press, who were more concerned at that moment with googling the name Caleb Folan.
After the kicking he has had from all and sundry, you can understand why the Irish manager might have a tendency to be defensive, but he doesn’t help his cause with often woolly explanations for his decisions and an absence of detail to back up his points.
An example: on Thursday, Staunton said that he’d seen Folan play when the striker was at Chesterfield but attempts to nail down precisely when he’d actually last seen the Wigan man in action foundered on the manager’s assertion that he’d seen “that many games” he couldn’t be specific. (A follow-up call clarified that he’d seen Folan during Chesterfield’s Carling Cup run late last year).
Then there was the staggering inconsistency between his claim that, on the one hand, he wanted strikers with Premiership experience and the fact that, on the other, he’d selected Anthony Stokes, who has scored one goal since joining Championship side Sunderland, ahead of David Connolly, who has scored 11 for the same club.
Staunton had words of praise for Connolly on Thursday, which only makes his omission all the more perplexing. True, the striker has often struggled to reproduce his club form at international level but the lack of logic in Staunton’s decision allows conspiracy theorists — and, er, Roy Keane — to maintain that Connolly’s absence could be related to his falling-out with Don Givens when the current U-21 boss was Ireland’s caretaker manager after Mick McCarthy stepped down in 2002.
Still, none of this will matter one whit if Staunton and his team can turn things around against Wales and Slovakia. First game first. On paper and with all key players fit, Ireland have enough quality to see off Wales, but you don’t even need to invoke unique factors like the historic occasion or Croker as an unfamiliar home, to imagine how it could all go pear-shaped.
On the basis of what we’ve seen so far of the Irish team under Staunton anything could happen next Saturday. Ireland could win by a goal or two or Ireland could lose by a goal or two. Is the real Ireland the one which performed well with its backs to the wall against the Czechs or the one which crumbled in Cyprus and stumbled across the line in San Marino? And does Staunton have the solution to that little conundrum?
It’s going to be a long ten days. There will be lots of press briefings and plenty of quotes but, as ever, the really important questions will only be answered on the field of play.
PS. Anyone for cricket?
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