WE’LL GET BALE
Keane urges players to use force on star
ROY KEANE has called on the Republic of Ireland players to use whatever force is necessary to disrupt Wales star Gareth Bale’s influence in Friday’s World Cup qualifier at Aviva Stadium. ‘Hit him,’ directed Keane. The Ireland assistant manager admires Bale but warned the Welsh wizard that the Irish team, ravaged by injuries, will be ready.
‘We’ve got good players up against him. They’re clever. The basic advice to any player if you’re up against a world-class player is: get to him as quick as you can, don’t let him get his head up like he does at Real Madrid.
‘Don’t give him space in behind because the boy can run. Hit him….fairly. Tackle him. Tackling is part of the bloody game,’ he added.
It is almost 16 years since Keane knocked Marc Overmars for six when Ireland made a World Cup statement of intent against Holland in Dublin. So what would Keane, the player, have done to deal with Bale? ‘He might have been more worried about me. I could play a little bit too, you know,’ he said.
THE two old boys were and bouncing off each other like only the best of double acts can. ‘I just really enjoy it,’ Kevin Doyle beamed, as he explained why he’s more than happy to be a squad player for the Republic of Ireland. ‘I really enjoy coming back and meeting up, probably more than ever. While I’m still a professional I just think “why not?” I’ll be dead long enough is the saying, isn’t it?’ the 33-yearold added.
‘Retired long enough,’ John O’Shea, 36 next month, pointed out playfully.
‘Yeah, I’ll be retired long enough,’ Doyle continued. ‘If the manager picks me, great. If he doesn’t pick me I won’t be retiring officially. If I don’t get picked I don’t get picked. That’s the way I look at it.’
Quick-witted O’Shea wasn’t going to hesitate. ‘He just comes back to show off his blonde highlights.’
With 178 international caps between them, neither were about to let the squad’s current injury problems get the better of them. O’Shea is set to benefit from the absence of Shane Duffy and Ciaran Clark by returning to the back four, while Doyle will move up the pecking order on the bench following Daryl Murphy’s withdrawal yesterday.
They’ve been around the block long enough at this stage not to get melodramatic about things. Indeed, they are two of only three survivors (Aiden McGeady is the other) in the current the squad that were part of history on March 24, 2007, when Ireland played Wales in the first ever soccer international at Croke Park during Euro 2008 qualifying.
As fate would have it, the two sides meet again on the exact same date a decade on with World Cup hopes on the line. ‘I’m sure we all, well I know I did, we grew up going to Croke Park,’ Wexford native Doyle recalled, before he teased the Waterford man beside him. ‘Watching Wexford play or Waterford play… or Kilkenny. Who did you watch? Whoever is doing well?
‘Sly dig,’ O’Shea laughed as he gave his reasons for split loyalties. ‘My Dad’s a Kilkenny man so that’s how I grew up. When I was old enough myself that’s when I was a Waterford man.’
Doyle followed in the footsteps of his mother, Bernie, a camogie player who graced the hallowed turf of GAA headquarters with Wexford, but the memories of his substitute appearance that afternoon are sketchy.
‘Did I?!’ he asked when his shot which hit the woodwork is brought up. ‘I’m trying to remember the games… It was nice to play at Croke Park for a couple of years but I do prefer playing at the Aviva. A simple thing — the stands are closer to the pitch. It’s just nicer and a soccer pitch is smaller than a GAA pitch. Playing at Croke Park made it feel very strange.
‘I remember at the time that it was hard to get your awareness of where the pitch was. If you stand on one side you couldn’t see the white line on the other side. It was hard to gauge.’
That qualifying campaign under Steve Staunton is one that will go down in infamy. Doyle missed the 5-2 defeat away to Cyprus after failing a fitness test an hour before kick-off while a month before the 1-0 win over Wales he again played no part because of injury when Ireland escaped with a 2-1 victory in San Marino courtesy of Stephen Ireland’s 94th minute winner.
At the time, Doyle was 23-yearsold and a bright young hope in Irish football. He ended the 2006/07 Premier League season with Reading as the country’s top scorer with 13 goals, despite those injury problems, and was pipped to the PFA Young Player of the Year award by Cesc Fabregas.
O’Shea, too, was an instrumental figure in the Manchester United team which won the league that year. The versatile star played 56 times in all competitions and before the Welsh game in Croke Park, he bounded into the international fold full of confidence having just scored an injury-time winner against Liverpool in front of The Kop.
So, the sight of a pimply-faced teenager by the name of Gareth Bale on the left wing didn’t mean much when then-Wales boss John Toshack threw him in against O’Shea, who played right full.
‘I remember marking him,’ he said, before providing a deadpan answer when asked how it went. ‘We won.’ Bale has since morphed into a Real Madrid galactico and become his country’s talisman. O’Shea will be much more wary of his ability this time around.
‘It’s been proven over the past few campaigns that there will be peaks and troughs with results going for you and results going against us,’ O’Shea added.
‘And if we can, obviously we’ve a couple of tricky away games out of the way, you’d hope that the home form can help us without a doubt to stay in the lead.’
And that would be something no one would ever forget.