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DUFF HAILS IRELAND’S ATTACKING DYNAMO
EURO 2012 is generally regarded by those Republic of Ireland players unfortunate to experience it as a severe test of their mental, physical and emotional endurance.
And that’s before even kicking a ball against Croatia, Spain or Italy.
‘Wherever I go, I tell people I’m unbreakable. I made it the hard way. I joke to my wife, if you ever want to get rid of me, you’ll have to kill me. But the European Championships were different. The European Championships came close to breaking me,’ Stephen Hunt wrote afterwards.
Regardless of those three group defeats, the joyless slog of repetitive training combined with isolamy tion in a hotel just yards from the main square of Sopot, the Polish seaside resort they were based during the tournament, wore the squad down.
Jonathan Walters described it akin to a ‘prison camp,’ and even if some did want to make a run for it and dive off the adjoining pier leading to the Baltic Sea their luck was out. It is the longest wooden pier in Europe.
Hunt didn’t get a taste of the action five years ago and James McClean, the new kid on the block who had taken the Premier League by storm with Sunderland, managed just 14 minutes as a substitute in the final defeat to Italy.
‘That tournament shattered my confidence a lot after that because I felt I should have been playing,’ he later explained. ‘The man who picked the team didn’t see me as being in the first XI even though I believed I should have been. I didn’t always agree with the manager but I had to respect his decisions and that hit confidence a bit.’
The man he replaced was Damien Duff, who rounded off his international career in Poland with his 100th cap against the Azzurri, and as McClean heads into tomorrow’s World Cup play-off first leg against Denmark, the Ireland centurion admits the Derry man had a lot to learn.
‘He was a breath of fresh air,’ Duff remembers. ‘I’m not sure whether he had his Twitter account then. Listen, he was young, naive, maybe not a lot between the ears at times. He was obviously starting to earn money and he was going out and spending it in Poland, buying anything and everything — Gucci here and new cars when he was back at his club.
‘But listen, that’s why the likes of John O’Shea have looked over him over the years and Séamus Coleman and the squad. All the lads love him, he’s a top pro. He is up and down. You can see away from the pitch he lives his life well, he doesn’t drink or anything like that. He’s important and he is affecting games for us.’
No one has made more of an impact on the big games during this campaign than McClean. Most recently, of course, his stunning half volley against Wales in Cardiff last month ensured Ireland got to this point. But his brace away to Moldova should not be forgotten at a stage when Martin O’Neill’s side were struggling 1-1 in Chisinau.
That potentially disastrous night ended with a 3-1 victory and McClean delivered once again on Ireland’s travels with a fine breakaway goal against Austria in Vienna. He has not totally planed those rough edges which make him such a combustible and excitable character — an accumulation of yellow cards meant he missed the penultimate Group D win at home to Moldova — but Duff has no problem with the 27-year-old maintaining some of that rawness which made him appeal to so many in the first place.
‘He is affecting games and that’s what big players do. That’s all you can ask. He looks like a different animal playing for Ireland. It means so much to him, along with the rest of the lads. But yeah, you can argue if he loses that edge, is he the same player? He scores a great goal and then he’s giving away stupid free-kicks in the last five or 10 minutes against Wales. But that’s a side of the game if he lost it maybe he wouldn’t be the same,’ Duff feels.
‘It’s a bit like Wayne Rooney,’ the two-time Premier League winner with Chelsea continues. ‘I don’t think he’s the same now, maybe because of legs or maybe because he has lost that edge. You don’t want James ever to lose it, just maybe to tone down his decision making with those types of free kicks.
‘But at the same time, when the team isn’t doing well he gets people off their arses and he gives the team momentum. Not with classic wing-play but by absolutely bulldozing into a 50/50 tackle, things like that. I don’t think you want him to lose it really.’
If 2012 didn’t knock it out of him, nothing will. McClean has gone from being the Gucci boy to a star of grit and goals for Ireland.