Saipan: Reliving demise of Ireland’s soccer dream

EVERY undertaker knows about keeping a respectful distance between burial and billing. The same code does not apply, however, to every profession.

For as long as there has existed the ability to print, photograph and film, disasters have been ripe for reporting, reproducing and dramatising in the factual and creative media with the rule of thumb being “the faster the better”.

The last air bubble had barely worked its way to the surface from the Titanic when the first movie short appeared, spawning an industry that continues to the retell the story with insatiable regularity to this day.

The jungles of Vietnam were still smoking when camera crews invaded Thailand to recreate tales of battles and bloodshed, and the Twin Towers were still an open wound when the first movie makers started thinking dialogue, characterisation and where to interrupt scenes for ad breaks.

Saipan was Ireland’s jungle horror, sinking ship and collective national trauma all rolled into one and the attention it has received reflects that unique place in the country’s history.

Immortalised already in several books and a comic play, the tale of the Republic of Ireland soccer squad’s eventful trip to the World Cup in 2002 is now the subject of a documentary DVD. Entitled Red Mist — Roy Keane and the Football Civil War, it seeks to remind us — as if we’d ever forgotten — of the insanity that ensued when the country’s greatest living footballer and his hapless national manager crossed swords on a sleepy little island in the western Pacific.

Calling it sleepy is to make Saipan sound animated. The tiny patch of ground (8km by 19km) had little happening except the gentle kind of tourism that involves an early morning stroll on a golf course, a nap by the pool in the afternoon and a nice seafood dinner followed by an early night. They serve mineral water plain, not sparkling, in case the fizz causes too much excitement.

“Nobody in their right mind here goes out and runs around at that time of the morning,” drawled John White, an American resident who contributed to the documentary, recalling the bafflement with which locals viewed these strange Irish visitors in an early training session.

Still, White didn’t notice anything seriously amiss. Until that is his 11-year-old son came over to him and said: “Dad, what’s a f***in’ b****s?”

While Junior was getting an accidental lesson in modern Irish vernacular, Roy Keane was going ballistic. Bad enough that the footballs and training gear had landed late on the island, but the training pitch was hard as permafrost.

It seems everyone on the island knew this would be the case except the FAI who organised the training camp. All sorts of broken concrete and other debris had been dumped on the site during building works on the adjacent Oleai Sports Complex whose director Elias Rangamor was candid about its potential.

“When it rains it makes puddles and holes. When it’s dry it’s solid as rock,” he grinned, recalling how staff would run around in the morning filling in any obvious chasms before the Irish came out to train.

The footage from Saipan will be fresh to most viewers who followed the ensuing drama 24 hours a day with a commitment not even displayed by those who watched the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold and expected the world to be blasted to pieces at any given moment.

The rest of the hour-long film is an entertaining mix of news reels, headlines, recordings of callers crying on air to talk show hosts, and mature reflections from media analysts and some of the presenters, commentators and journalists caught up in the tornado.

“We got more contact on this, of people’s hurt and rage and anger and sadness and mourning than we did following 9/11,” said Marian Finucane, who was presenting the Liveline radio programme at the time.

The timing of Red Mist’s release is both strange and fortuitous. It goes on sale next week but it is also being shown on pay-for channel Setanta Ireland tomorrow night at a time when, if things had gone as hoped, the average sports fan would be too loved up about the Irish World Cup rugby squad to care.

As it turns out, however, it could be that remembering Saipan may be perfect for the melancholic mood likely to be sweeping the nation when Drico and Co leave the pitch in Paris.

In fact, it could be argued that the nation’s rugby woes were inevitable given the string of sporting disasters that have subdued us since Saipan. In soccer, we failed to qualify for the last European Championships or the last World Cup and the current European qualifying campaign looks all but over.

In the Olympics, one man and his horse seemed to save the day after days of dismal performances — only to be stripped of his gold medal after a doping scandal. Our cricketers surpassed themselves in their World Cup, it has to be said, but kind of in the way the Jamaican bobsleigh team surpassed their limitations.

And now the rugby. The players’ personal lives are under the spotlight, illness has struck the camp, the manager is being hailed or assailed depending on your viewpoint and the match results are as hard on the soul as the Saipan training pitch was on the soles.

Rugbygate is the new Saipan and inevitably someone, somewhere is thinking of a script, a storyboard and a title. All we can hope for is some respectful distance to grieve first.