Avoidable charade leavesa sour taste for all involved
LAST week, watching Northern Ireland’s industrious but limited forwards Josh Magennis and Liam Boyce plough wistful furrows against Austria and Bosnia and Herzegovina respectively, has only sharpened the sense of regret regarding the fresh dispute between Kyle Lafferty, Michael O’Neill, the Irish FA — and now Rangers.
Lafferty’s failure to follow protocol over international withdrawal, citing an Achilles injury, has left the Ibrox star exposed. The long goodbye has begun.
Steven Gerrard (below, right), like most who once starred extensively in the international arena, appreciates the personal value of playing for your country as well as the reflected worth to the players’ club. However, if Lafferty is thinking of calling it quits with Northern Ireland, then the Rangers boss is unlikely to dissuade him.
In the hours after playing for three minutes in Rangers’
3-1 win over Hearts, and the apparent absence of a doctor’s note from Ibrox, the player should simply have presented himself at Northern Ireland’s luxury training camp in Austria before being advised to return to Scotland. Of course, you could point out the chicanery of this, but at least a rift may have been prevented.
A lack of real transparency about the timeline of events, and hiding behind Fifa’s fiveday rule, leaves the issue open to wider questions over what has promoted this little-utilised measure. The Australian FA slapped down the order on Leeds United in 1999 over Harry Kewell — and now Northern Ireland are using it in a roundabout attempt to cut Lafferty (left) adrift.
The murky waters will have repercussions for the relationship between the IFA and Rangers, a club which has supplied several key performers to the national side, from Billy Simpson to Jimmy Nicholl, John McClelland, Steven Davis and Lafferty.
If every association decided to entangle relationships with clubs in such bureaucratic bombast then we would be looking at shadow squads on a regular basis. Scotland, for example, are never going to cause friction with Celtic or Rangers if a similar situation arose with, for instance, Kieran Tierney or Allan McGregor.
Feelings around Ibrox are of surprise at this IFA salvo. There are strong beliefs that Lafferty should call time on his Northern Ireland career. Indeed, fighting for a Rangers jersey may prompt the Fermanagh native to curtail international commitment
— if O’Neill hasn’t indirectly, and disrespectfully, made the decision for him.
Considering O’Neill’s lack of a detailed explanation — that is, the current relationship between the pair — we must conclude that, while the player’s timing was poor and ill-judged, surely a heart-toheart, rather than a dusty Fifa missive, could have provided prudent warmth?
Lafferty is mindful that, at 31, he must be in prime condition to appear regularly at club level. It won’t be easy to claim a regular Rangers starting place, especially with Alfredo Morelos in exceptional form. Nevertheless, there is no excuse for prevarication. His midnight phone call to O’Neill two Sundays ago was strange, given his status with Northern Ireland remains at least as high as his current position at Ibrox.
In Fifa ‘regulations for the status and transfer of players, annexe 1, section 5’, O’Neill is sending out a message to others about turning up for international duty, which is understandable. It also has the hallmarks of a manager who has a short memory over Lafferty’s Northern Ireland service of 20 goals across 68 appearances. The Euro 2016 odyssey would not have happened without the country’s second highest goalscorer.
There are theories in certain circles that O’Neill has been trying to get rid of the forward for some time now. Such passive-aggression is, frankly, ill-befitting of a Northern Ireland manager. Increasingly so when you weigh the alternatives.
Lafferty is no Edin Dzeko or Marko Arnautovic, but his absence in the double-header against Austria and Bosnia was clinically obvious, when witnessing both Magennis and Boyce lurch to little effect.
Interestingly, the fiasco is, arguably, a clunky attempt to somehow detract O’Neill’s responsibility to garner results. While the manager still enjoys a justifiable afterglow of the French connection two years ago, then Lafferty also deserves a similar respect as well as criticism over his seemingly cavalier take on turning up for green and white duty.
International football has lost its sheen for many and O’Neill appears to have temporarily lost sight of this. In the modern professional consciousness, money and club prospects naturally take precedence.
Lafferty, savouring a rare second chance at Rangers, has, essentially, no more disrespected his country than O’Neill did when he held talks over the Scotland job last year to ultimately extract a better contract from the IFA.
Northern Ireland’s attempt to marginalise the colourful Erneman could spark unwelcome consequences for Rangers. The Ibrox outfit are tracking Davis with a view to a January return to Glasgow for the Northern Ireland captain. Davis may opt against a move if Rangers take a hard stance towards future co-operation with Northern Ireland — and O’Neill in particular.
There is an outside, nuclear, option potentially open to Lafferty if he decides Northern Ireland remain worth the commitment.
The former Hearts man could opt out while O’Neill is in charge before returning to the fold. It isn’t without precedent. David Weir returned to Scotland duty after a two-year exile when he fell out with then coach Berti Vogts.
Meanwhile, Rangers now have to do without Lafferty at Hamilton on Sunday.
The Accies’ plastic pitch is hardly conducive to a player nursing an injury, so the player will have time to rest — and ref lect.
And the reality of Northern Ireland denying an employee the opportunity to work for the club which pays him handsomely is something that Gerrard — a man with a long memory — is unlikely to forget.
An absolute, and avoidable, charade.