A brief history of time

Stan must find way to overcome Duff loss

TIME, as my old mate Einstein liked to say after a few scoops, is a quare class of thing. Or words to that effect. This coming week marks the 30th anniversary of the very first production from my old alma mater, Hot Press, which means that, among other things, it’s 30 years since the Sex Pistols outraged Jubilee Blighty with ‘God Save The Queen’.

Clearly, this is not possible on any level, and not least because yours truly was actually embarking on what passes for his journalistic career at that point in time. So short of being such a gifted prodigy that I would have had to be covering the punk scene in nappies – hence, the safety pin chic, sez you — I simply refuse to accept that 30 years have passed since I first heard Johnny Rotten howling ‘Noooo future’ and figured that there might indeed be a future in this sort of thing.

On the other hand, time can seem to expand just as readily as it appears to contract (to simplify Big Al’s ramblings, once again). Consider, for example, that it is barely ten months since the Republic of Ireland set out on the Euro qualifying road to Austria and Switzerland. Feels a bit longer, doesn’t it? A bit more like, oh, 30 years? Fortunately, we don’t need recourse to the Theory Of Relativity to explain this peculiar phenomenon. All we need to note is that Cyprus added ten years to all our lives and San Marino another twenty.

Nevertheless, so much has happened since Steve Staunton took over the reins – recording a morale-boosting 3-0 win over Sweden in his first game in charge — that it’s still hard to get your head around the idea that, just this time last year, the Irish squad was heading into its summer break on the back of a working trip to Portugal and a friendly in Dublin against Chile. “Nice training camp, shame about the match,” I wrote in the aftermath of a 0-1 defeat which most of us were content enough to write off as an end of season blip.

That was until August when Holland ran riot at Lansdowne Road, winning 4-0 and inflicting damage that was as much psychological as physical. The following month, an otherwise decent performance in the Group opener in Stuttgart couldn’t mask the fact that Ireland wouldn’t have scored if the game had continued for another 30 years, the 1-0 victory for Germany meaning that it was now three defeats on the spin for Staunton’s boys.

Then came Cyprus and, if the wheels had come off against the Dutch, this was the point at which the wheezing jalopy simply collapsed in the middle of the road, bits flying off every which way, the engine pouring black smoke and everybody running around with their heads in their hands as the whole thing went up in flames. Or, to put it another way, Cyprus beat Ireland 5-2.

Cue national angst, Stan Must Go, you’re-not-fit-to-wear the shirt, and the first sighting of Miss Piggy at a Republic of Ireland training session. The increasingly bi-polar nature of Ireland’s campaign was evident in the immediate response, a stirring performance in a 1-1 draw with the Czech Republic at Lansdowne Road on a night when, having had his hand forced by injuries, Staunton unearthed a tyro in Paul McShane and rediscovered a veteran in Lee Carsley.

Mention the words ‘San’ and ‘Marino’ to any Irish football fan and they immediately succumb to a terrible post-traumatic flashback, the sheer agony of which tends to block out the fact that Ireland had actually beaten the minnows 5-0 in Dublin in November before heading off to the tiny Republic for the return engagement the following February.

Out of a sense of charity we won’t revisit in detail what transpired on that chilly night in the Serravalle Stadium except to say that never in Irish football have three points gained felt more like a moral defeat. Cue renewed vilification of Staunton, the players, John Delaney and the FAI, with virtually the whole cast of the ‘The Muppets’ now guaranteed at last a walk-on part in Irish sports journalism.

Blessed relief all round finally arrived with the move to Croker in March, first with a workmanlike 1-0 win over Wales, thanks to Stephen Ireland’s splendid goal, and then with the first truly impressive performance and victory of the campaign, as Kevin Doyle’s goal saw off Slovakia and both manager and team lived to fight another day.

In the absence of competitive games for Ireland since then, things have steered a steady and encouraging course. The defection of so many star names which had threatened to turn the recent US sojourn into a Mickey Mouse event actually proved to be the making of the tour, as young guns like Daryl Murphy, Anthony Stokes, Darren Potter, Stephen O’ Halloran and Colin Doyle all contributed to respectable draws with Ecuador and Bolivia and, in the process, staked a claim for inclusion in the squad for the big games to come in the autumn.

Meanwhile, as Group D last week prepared to fold up its tend for the year, it continued to do us favours, Wales taking two points off the Czech Republic and Germany beating Slovakia 2-1, to effectively make it a three-horse race for the second qualifying spot, with Ireland now just one point behind the Czechs and the Slovaks drifting off the pace.

But before the competitive action resumes in September, Staunton will have to ponder deeply on the options available to him, fitness permitting. Captain Robbie Keane missed the impressive victory over Slovakia but, assuming he resumes the scintillating club form he was showing at Spurs toward the end of the season, he has to come straight back into the next eleven. But with Reading’s Kevin Doyle having emerged as the real find of this campaign, the obvious ploy of the two strikers upfront means Staunton will have to look again at how he accommodates Stephen Ireland who was so effective playing off the lone front man at Croke Park. 4-4-2, with Ireland as the creative midfield presence alongside the enforcer Carsley, would seem the best way forward.

But the biggest problem facing Staunton is how he and the team as a whole will cope with the absence of Damien Duff. Along with Shay Given, Duff is the player you really don’t want Ireland to be without, but that is now the nightmare scenario facing the manager who has already conceded that the Newcastle winger is out for the remainder of the campaign.

The most obvious contenders to fill the gap include Aiden McGeady and Stephen Hunt, but the Celtic player would need to raise his game another few notches while the Reading man has yet to prove conclusively that he can be more than a high-energy impact sub. Whatever the preferred solution, the reality is that Staunton and the players will have to get it right at pretty much the first time of asking in the heat of real competitive battle – and away from home to boot.

The textbook says that you need to win your home games and pick up points on the road but, as far as Ireland’s Group D campaign is concerned, the textbook was effectively shredded back in Cyprus. A minimum of four points is what is now required from the back to back games with Slovakia and the Czech Republic and – bearing in mind that the Czechs should have banked another three against San Marino on the same day that Ireland play the Slovaks – it follows that a win in Prague may well be vital to any hopes Ireland have of overhauling the Czechs and securing the second qualifying place, especially since the head to head record will be the first criterion for separating teams level on points.

A win in Prague? More easily said than done, particularly if you accept the contention that the last really critical away win against significant opposition which Ireland have enjoyed in a tournament qualifier was a 1-0 victory over Scotland (who, even then, were not to be confused with Brazil) in Hampden Park in 1987.

And you don’t need me — or Einstein — to tell you that that was a long, long time ago. Though not ten years after ‘God Save The Queen’, obviously.