Wow factor absent as Ireland exile drags on

WHEN your correspondent isn’t busy reporting on groin strains, I like nothing better than to relax with a book written by someone who holds a PhD in quantum physics.

After all, if you have spent too much of your adult life writing about the FAI’s club licensing scheme, you need to chill out once in a while with a little light reading.

So here’s a tip of the hat to the eminently qualified Michael Brooks, author of a recently published tome called 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, a stimulating crash-course in some of the most intriguing scientific mysteries of our times. Here be bracing essays on such mind-bending puzzlers as life, death, sex, cold fusion, dark matter, free will, the placebo effect and, my personal favourite, the so-called “Wow!” signal – a celebrated transmission from outer space picked up by Ohio State University’s Big Ear telescope in August 1977.

Tantalisingly, it lasted only a couple of minutes but its astonishing fingerprint – which seemed to meet all the requirements of intelligent design – was enough to inspire the scientist who detected it to write the word and exclamation mark ‘wow!’ beside the relevant data in the print-out. More than 30 years later, this mysterious signal still defies all credible scientific explanation, leaving only the most incredible one of all still standing – it’s just possible that alien intelligence might once have said a quick ‘hello’ to planet earth.

Pretty wild, eh? But still not as baffling and bewildering, I would humbly contend, as the mystery which should surely have been number 14 in Michael Brooks’ book – why isn’t Stephen Ireland playing for Ireland?

Last weekend, the Manchester City man spoke out again about his absence from the international scene but anyone expecting to have some light shed on the meaning of it all would have been as disappointed as the scientists still trying to make sense of the ‘wow’ signal three decades on. Ireland’s, sadly, was more of a ‘what?!?’ signal.

Here’s what the Cobh man had to say: “It’s a shame the way I left. It wasn’t the right way to leave but, even before that, I thought something was stirring up. It was like a ticking timebomb and I just didn’t enjoy my time there. Sometimes it’s hard to say I’ll never go back because anything can change and it’s got nothing to do with the staff the management or the players. But right now I am just happy with my club.”

All of which means what exactly? It was a shame the way he left, he says – no arguments there – but yet not so shameful that he didn’t think it worth his while to make amends by coming back. Talk of ticking timebombs and something stirring up hints at darker forces at work – but, again, there’s no clarity.

Is he referring to something inside himself or, as rumours had it at the time, a problem he had with other members of the Irish squad? But apparently it can’t be the latter because he then goes on to say that it’s got nothing to do with the staff, the management or the players.

Which leaves us where exactly? “I don’t think there is a future there,” he said. “It is unlikely I will go back,” he went on. And then this: “Sometimes it’s hard to say I’ll never go back because anything can change … but right now I am just happy with my club.”

At least this much we know: he wasn’t happy playing for Ireland but he is happy playing for his club. And what sounds like Stephen Ireland’s comfort zone would probably be the best place to park the whole saga, ideally forever, except that we all know this isn’t just about to go away. And that’s simply because, right now, Stephen Ireland is by some distance the most outstanding Irish footballer on the planet.

And, at his current rate of progress, he might be one of the best, period, by the time the World Cup finals hover into view next summer. A nominee for the Young Player of the Year award in England this year, who would bet against him being a contender, potentially even a winner, in the senior category in 12 months’ time?

And should Ireland (the team) be packing their bags for South Africa at that point, rest assured that there will be calls for Ireland (the player) to be parachuted in, even at the 11th hour.

Hard-core supporters, some media observers and, most significantly, Irish squad members and perhaps even Giovanni Trapattoni might beg to differ, but I would have no doubt that, in the hype and hoopla which invariably attends the country’s imminent participation in the finals of the World Cup, there would a huge groundswell of popular opinion calling for every kind of intervention – from the Taoiseach down – to get Ireland’s greatest footballer back onside for the greatest show on earth.

At least Stephen Ireland’s words to the effect that it will be a long time, if at all, before he ever again dons a green shirt, should spare Trapattoni the usual déjà vu effect when he announces his squad on Monday for the Nigeria and Bulgaria games.

Which is a pity, because we were all anxious to see how the Trap would respond to Roy Keane’s recent suggestion that the Ireland manager should be prepared to sleep outside Stephen Ireland’s house if that’s what it takes to entice him back into the green fold.

So a respite for Mr Trapattoni there but only, I suspect, a brief one. Hoping against hope, the nation will go on awaiting its ‘wow!’ signal from Stephen Ireland.