Any lingering doubts about wisdom of fixture dissipated in goodwill

By Michael Moynihan, Páirc Uí Chaoimh

The fallacy about sport is that it belongs to the young. This is not quite true, though the young often feel that they invented their particular pastime, or that it exists for their enjoyment alone.

Their elders often feel that the young don’t quite appreciate sport; that because they don’t understand that their mastery and skills and stamina are not forever, they aren’t reverent enough when it comes to their temporary gift of athleticism.

Their elders know this well and would be twice as reverent if they could, but those gifts are lost to them.

When they were young themselves, of course, they never thought those gifts were on loan.

So to yesterday in Páirc Uí Chaoimh and the Liam Miller Tribute Match.

It need hardly be said that this was less cut-throat competition than curated approximation between the versions of Manchester United and Celtic/Ireland on view. No-one came expecting blood and thunder, and no-one was disappointed. The first goal, for instance, was scored by a chap in his early 50s.

Not just any chap in his early 50s, however. Denis Irwin’s career was a portrait of astonishing success and terrific athleticism, but for thousands of those in attendance yesterday it was something else as well: A reminder of another time, maybe. A period not distant enough to be history but close enough to justify your nostalgia.

Irwin’s inimitable run — slightly inclined, the bare forearms working hard to balance — is still intact, but as anyone in their second half-century will tell you, the legs don’t eat up the ground the way they used to.

This is an experience with a thousand exemplars and it seemed yesterday that a lot of them were on show. Time has not dimmed Gary Neville’s ability to point busily in every direction at once, or the curious, inward-facing wrist of Ryan Giggs even as he floated down the wing. The markers of their identity were all intact, even if they were a little more deliberate than 20 years ago.

As a consequence, the cliched assumption would be that yesterday in the stadium there were thousands of middle-aged men, and older, with their sons and daughters, come to present the heroes of their youth. That wasn’t the case, though.

There were plenty of individuals or pairs or groups in the crowd who hadn’t brought a posse of children; maybe they had come to collect. They had invested their time and devotion in the men out on the pitch when they were young and now they could see that time had lain a heavy hand on the shoulders — and knees, and lumbar regions — of those youngsters of two decades ago.

There they were, 20 yards away, close enough to turn and look if they heard some of the comments, which Neville seemed to do more than once.

If those flying wingers and dashing centre-forwards were now doing more on-field direction than distribution, then you felt a little better about your own morning creaks and straining waistband, perhaps.

They had been fabled and feted, but now that they looked like they could be a member of your Thursday evening five-a-side, you could feel... reassurance.

Perhaps that’s overstating matters somewhat.

After all, yesterday wasn’t an occasion for tough questions — literally, in Martin O’Neill’s case, when the matter of Declan Rice was raised gingerly before the game — but it might have confirmed some of our prejudices which have nothing to do with the game.

For instance, your correspondent is calling the result of the upcoming presidential election now, based on the far from scientific polling venture which was Michael D Higgins’ arrival on the field before the game.

Fiery or stale, those dragons are wasting their breath: the reception the president got was matched in the first half only by the applause for Roy Keane’s arrival after the break.

At this point, the Mayfield man looks like Higgins’s only valid rival, though his appeal may be quite localised.

It was a day for easy answers, though. Any lingering doubts about the wisdom of the fixture dissipated in the goodwill, and the only regret was that it took the untimely passing of a young man to justify the occasion in the first place.

In the match programme there was a photograph of Liam Miller with his mother and father, Billy and Bridie, on the day he signed for Celtic in 1998, a kid with his career about to start.

It was good to see him remembered yesterday, and to see the face of a young man with the best of days still ahead of him.