The unlikely lads

BY the time you read this, David Beckham should have made his much-hyped comeback for England against Brazil at Wembley last night and you will know whether it was (a) the greatest resurrection since Lazarus or (b) the most pointless second coming since The Eagles got back together.

From the perspective of this column, it doesn’t matter either way and not least because, assuming Becks didn’t suffer a hairline fracture of the hairline in a manly embrace with Kaka, it won’t be until next week’s Euro qualifier against Estonia that we’ll really know if Steve McLaren’s apparently desperate gamble has paid off. No, for the purposes of this morning’s epistle, all that really matters is that David Beckham answered his country’s call — and for that we salute him.

Praise for Becks? Whatever next? Well, brace yourselves, my submission for Most Unlikely Sentence Of The Year is coming up: in contemplating David Beckham, I can’t help but find myself thinking also of our own Kevin Moran. (Brief pause to allow my devoted readers — Sid and Doris Bonkers — a moment to compose themselves).

On the face of it, Becks and Kev don’t have much in common. Yes, they both wore the famous red of Manchester United but even when they moved on to Spain, Becks headed straight for Real Madrid, arguably the most famous name in world football, while Moran fetched up in Sporting Gijon, a club of whom many have said ‘who?’

There are other salient differences between the two. Victoria is unlikely ever to find an All-Ireland medal stashed away in her jewellery box, while Moran played in an era when a “wag” was always “proverbial” and resided either in the press box or on the terrace. Even in the area of headgear, the two footballers went their separate ways, the Londoner favouring the Alice band while the Dubliner invariably opted for the style known as bloodied white bandage.

But on one point the odd couple are at one: when asked to do so, they show up.

Back in 1992, as the Republic of Ireland set out on the road to the World Cup in America, Kevin Moran appeared to have been left behind. At club level, he may have been enjoying something of an Indian Summer having returned from Spain to join Blackburn Rovers, but Jack Charlton seemed to think that the veteran’s race was run as an international.

But then, three games into the campaign, Ireland suffered a rash of defensive injuries and Moran suddenly found himself called back into the squad at the 11th hour for a crucial away match against Denmark.

Even at that, he still didn’t think he would actually see action in the Parken Stadium.

“The ironic thing was,” he told me later, “that I came into a squad that had already got two centre-halves in Alan Kernaghan and David O’ Leary — yet I got in ahead of Dave. With Jack, two and two, at times, definitely did not make four!”

The night before the game I bumped into Kevin’s wife Eleanor as a cab dropped her off at her hotel in Copenhagen. As with her husband’s surprise recall, she’d had to make last-minute arrangements in order to make the trip.

“But I had to come,” she told me, “because this might be Kevin’s last game for Ireland.”

But it wasn’t. The following night in the cold and rain of the Parken Stadium, Kevin Moran was absolutely immense alongside Alan Kernaghan at the heart of an Irish defence which kept Brian Laudrup at bay in a hard-fought scoreless draw which earned the boys in green a precious away point on the road to the USA. And the Dubliner’s typically wholehearted performance was enough for Jack Charlton to play him in a further five of the twelve qualifying games before taking him to the World Cup finals as a non-playing member of the squad. By the time he’d won the last of his 71 caps for his country, Kevin Moran was 37. The record says that he retired from football in 1994 but I’m not sure that I remember an official announcement. So, 13 years on, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he’s still on standby somewhere, waiting for the call, prepared to show up as ever.

This past week Ryan Giggs announced that he would retire from international football after today’s European Championship qualifier between Wales and the Czech Republic in his native Cardiff. Giggs, Manchester United’s most decorated player, said that he felt he hadn’t been performing well enough for his country and would now concentrate for the remainder of his career on life at Old Trafford. The news was greeted with sadness but also a deluge of accolades for a man widely esteemed as a model professional and generally regarded as his country’s most outstanding natural talent of the modern era. Wales boss John Toshack paid tribute to “a very special person” but you didn’t have to read much between the lines to see that the retirement of his most experienced player and captain had come as a shattering blow.

Well, good luck to Giggs (and here’s hoping he does Ireland a favour in his Millennium Stadium swansong today). After all, he’s doing nothing that a lot of his colleagues in the Premiership and elsewhere haven’t done before, choosing club over country in the twilight of their careers. And, since making his international debut at the age of 17, he’s been a better role model than most.

But those of us who never (quite) made it as professional footballers are entitled to dispute the wisdom of the decision. Increasingly, football seems to hold that the club rules supreme but, for the fan still in touch with his or her inner child, playing for your country remains the greatest dream of all.

For all the madness of the celebrity life which swirls around him, David Beckham seems to have retained something of that innocent, romantic streak, handling his ostracisation by Real Madrid and England with dignity and then unfussily answering the call of both when the time came around again. Whether the plan pays dividends remains to be seen but for just showing up, like Kevin Moran was always prepared to do, I think Becks deserves our admiration.