What’s eating Liam Brady?

ACCORDING to researchers who obviously have nothing better to be doing, Monday was, officially, the most depressing day of the year.

The third Monday in January,according to the boffins, is when the black dog barks loudest, as people wrestle with gloomy weather, mounting bills and dwindling accounts, all combining to ensure that the post-holiday blues are at their most acute. So maybe that explains why Liam Brady was in such tetchy form out in Abbotstown as he joined Giovanni Trapattoni at the top table for the unveiling of the manager’s latest World Cup squad.

Although not entirely, since we all know that Ireland’s assistant manager does have a bit of form in this regard: think of his petulant outburst on RTÉ when the production team dared poke a bit of fun at Arsene Wenger or his rising to the bait during the Euro Championship when the Dunph provoked him by repeatedly dismissing the German team which reached the final as “useless”.

On Monday, the rather milder provocation came in the form of questions from the floor about the missing men, Stephen Ireland and Andy Reid. And while Trapattoni took them in his stride, not even bothering to rise from his seat for a bit of the old performance art, Brady’s face grew increasingly pained until he finally couldn’t take it anymore.

“You’re wasting your time,” he told one reporter who sought his view on the absence yet again of Andy Reid, a player the assistant manager is known to hold in high regard. Of course, it was something of a loaded question for precisely that reason but, as any hack politician will tell you, there are plenty of ways to fend off that sort of thing without resorting to dismissing the questioner as well as the question.

But it was one query too many about Stephen Ireland which sent Brady a bit over the top.

“We just said that we agreed when we went to Manchester, we agreed that Stephen Ireland, he said he would contact us when he was ready,” he shot back. “Is that not clear? Is that not clear? Is that clear? We agreed that he would contact us if we he wanted to come back, okay? There’s no timescale....”

And then in what proved an almost comically controversial postscript, he snapped: “Have a bit of respect for your country....”

The upshot was that journalists present were left a tad confused as to whether he was referring to the press man or the player. Myself, I felt pretty sure that it was a reference to Ireland. One call to the FAI later however and, shock horror (not), the word came back that Brady had been referring to the journalist.

Still, nobody should be surprised if, even more than Trapattoni himself, Brady is deeply frustrated with Stephen Ireland’s intransigence.

To his credit, the former Arsenal man was unshakeably committed to the national cause during his glittering career. Even when he wasplaying his football in Italy — and cultivating a relationship with Trap ‘n’ Tardelli — the Dubliner had a clause in his contract guaranteeing his release for Irish games. And, as he pointed out to me in an interview 17 years ago, a time when, as manager at Celtic, he was seeing more of the club’s point of view in the club v country debate: “That was before there was anything like the six-day rule (obliging clubs to release players for internationals). Back then, there would have been no requirement to release me.”

And when I asked him if he always insisted on being released, I got a touch of the old narrow eye: “I don’t think you even have to ask me that.”

That Brady was by no means unique among the players in those days in his devotion to the green shirt, shouldn’t detract from respect for his unflagging desire to heed the national call. Like many of the old-school, he had a pride in playing for his country which ran deep and chimed with the then popular public view that there can be no greater honour for a professional footballer than to pull on the shirt of his country.

That laudably romantic notion may take more of a battering these days but in the case of Stephen Ireland, rather than a club v country row, the raging debate seems to be taking place entirely in his own head. If and when he ever resolves it to anyone’s satisfaction remains to be seen but you can’t help suspecting that, when they had their meeting with the player in Manchester, Trapattoni might have been happy to tickle his tummy whereas Brady would have been more inclined to redden his ear.

The truth of it is that, at some level, we are all a bit weary of the debate by now but if Liam Brady is going to take a seat at a management press conference he might as well resign himself to the fact that interest in the saga of the best outfield Irish player in the Premier league is not going to go away — at least not until one or other of the key parties finally brings the matter to a definitive close.

Brady might find it a hard notion to swallow, coming from the ranks of the dreaded meeja, but a genuine desire to see the best talent available for the national team hardly betrays a lack of respect for the country.