The strange case of Stephen Ireland
Barely an hour and a half later, the fact that Slovakia had dented Irish qualification hopes with an injury time equaliser, was suddenly the least of the young midfielder’s problems.
When the 21-year-old Cobh native scored that goal, his fourth of an impressive campaign for his country, he did so oblivious to the fact that the extraordinary saga which would catapult him into the headlines for all the wrong reasons was already under way.
The policy of turning off all mobile phones in the period immediately preceding a game meant that Stephen Ireland’s girlfriend Jessica was unable to contact him with urgent news. Having tried, with a similar lack of success, to contact manager Stephen Staunton, Jessica eventually got through to an FAI official and claimed, falsely as it later turned out, that Ireland’s grandmother had died.
Immediately after the final whistle, Staunton, accompanied by team doctor Alan Byrne, took the player aside and told him the news. “I was deeply shocked because I believed it was my maternal grandmother who had brought me up from when I was five,” Ireland said yesterday.
Staunton went back into the dressing room to get the player’s phone and Ireland rang Jessica to confirm the news. According to Ireland, it was then that he learned his girlfriend had suffered a miscarriage and that she had invented the story about his grandmother because she thought the FAI might let her boyfriend come home quicker.
It was at this point, judging by his own account, that Ireland made a fateful decision. Sources in the FAI suggest that, had the player — who was described by those who came into contact with him as being “distraught” following the phone call — immediately come clean about the situation, he would have received both a sympathetic hearing and permission to fly home to be with his girlfriend. Instead, Ireland chose to go along with the fiction about his grandmother having died. The cover-up had begun and, as is so often the case, the cover-up would serve only to make a bad situation worse.
Late into Saturday night, the FAI were exploring options to get the player home. Not wanting to leave him behind in Bratislava, they investigated the possibility of bringing him with squad to Prague the next day to catch a scheduled flight back to the UK. But when no other speedy option presented itself, FAI Chief Executive John Delaney authorised the hiring of a private plane at a cost to the association believed to be around €10,000.
FAI press officer Gerry McDermott drove Ireland to Bratislava airport on Sunday morning and, in the course of conversation, they discussed the likely media interest which would attend the funeral of his grandmother in Cork. Since McDermott knew that the media would want as much detail about the bereavement as possible, he also asked for the name of the woman he understood to be deceased. Ireland told him that her name was Patricia Tallon.
The FAI released news of the circumstances of Ireland’s departure that afternoon to journalists who had flown on to Prague for the next qualifying game against the Czech Republic. In a statement, the Association and manager Steve Staunton also expressed their condolences to Ireland and his family. But, later that evening, the first doubts began to emerge from sources in Cork that Patricia Tallon had actually died. By late on Sunday night, it was confirmed that she was indeed alive and well, and those newspapers which had named her in their early editions began making frantic attempts to rectify the story in their later editions.
The following Monday morning, Steve Staunton — who admitted that he too had been up late trying to clarify the situation — updated journalists after a squad training session in Prague. He said he had spoken to Ireland in London that morning by phone and that the player had confirmed that there had been a case of mistaken identity. It was not Ireland’s maternal grandmother in Cobh who had died but his paternal grandmother in London. Ireland gave this woman’s name as Brenda Kitchener and, although Staunton did not reveal that information at the time, a number of journalists confirmed it with the FAI later and ran it in their papers.
As with his earlier claims about Patricia Tallon — who later appeared in one newspaper to proclaim her well-being — it is almost impossible to understand how Ireland thought that he could conceivably sustain this latest fabrication. In his statement yesterday, Ireland said: “Jessica and I were still very upset over the miscarraige’’, adding that the couple flew home to Ireland for a few days.
Meanwhile, back in Prague, Steve Staunton, accepting in good faith the player’s explanation for the initial confusion, urged the media “to let it lie” and returned his attention to preparing the Irish squad for Wednesday’s game against the Czech Republic.
That was how the issue stood until Thursday when, according to Ireland’s own statement, he received a call from his club Manchester City — who had also given the player compassionate leave — informing him that the FAI had discovered that Brenda Kitchener too was alive. Her immediate family also contacted a newspaper to confirm this as fact. It was only after the call from his club that Ireland says he decided he had to tell the truth.
In yesterday’s lengthy statement, Ireland apologised to his grandmother, his family, his club, Steve Staunton, his team mates, the FAI, and both Ireland and Manchester City supporters. “I have learnt a valuable lesson from this mess,” he said, “and I hope those I have hurt by my actions will forgive me.”
The reaction from his club and country was broadly sympathetic.
Manchester City manager Sven Goran Eriksson did say that he was “disappointed” with a player who had made “a stupid mistake.” But the former England boss went on: “I won’t crucify him over it. I’ll speak to him in training (today) and if he’s okay he’ll probably take his place in some part of the game on Sunday.”
He added: “Stephen Ireland is a fantastic football player, he’s young, maybe he’s had some problems now, but I like him — both as a person and a footballer.”
Asked if he thought Ireland had an international future, Sven replied: “Absolutely. Football-wise for sure he has an international future.”
Steve Staunton also struck an understanding tone in his response yesterday to Ireland’s belated clarification.
Said the Irish manager: “He is a player who loves playing for his country and unfortunately made a poor judgement call because of the traumatic circumstances he found himself in. I hope he can now put this behind him and learn from it because he is a young player with a tremendous future in the game.”
But even allowing for such expressions of natural sympathy for a young man who found himself in difficult circumstances, the issue of Stephen Ireland’s credibility is now a serious one. Whether Steve Staunton’s understanding extends to naming the player in his squad for next month’s game against Germany in Dublin, we will have to wait and see.
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