ROCK STEADY SUPPORT
Whatever Roy Keane thinks, Keith Andrews is at the heart of Stephen Kenny’s Ireland
ASKED about replacing John Eustace at his squad announcement last week, Stephen Kenny clarified the hierarchy in his boot room.
The questioner inadvertently referred to Eustace, who spent three months as a coach with Ireland, as assistant manager.
‘Obviously, Keith Andrews is my assistant,’ started Kenny, and that he felt the need to add that correction seemed important.
Andrews is a prominent figure during warm-ups before games, and he is tracksuited and booted at training sessions as well.
But his value to Kenny clearly goes beyond the technical. The manager is looking to replace Eustace, but he also has Dean Kiely as part of his support staff. Stephen Rice, a League of Ireland stalwart who played under Kenny in his career, and who now works as a development coach at Crystal Palace, is in with the squad during this international window, too.
The players will not want for voices offering instruction, then, but it is the voice of Andrews to which Kenny is especially attentive.
Divisions of labour differ from group to group, but convention holds that an assistant manager differs most pointedly from a coach in their relationship with the manager.
The best serve as counsellors and confidants, and the value of Andrews to Kenny can only have increased given the churn of coaches, from Damien Duff to Anthony Barry, to Eustace.
Their relationship goes back to Kenny asking Andrews to assist him with the Ireland Under 21s in 2018. On his promotion to the senior job in 2020, Kenny brought Andrews with him.
The assistant has remained steadfast since, with two significant public interventions. The first came in a long radio interview given by Andrews in September 2021, when the pressure on Kenny was intense and the manager had a record of two wins from his first 19 games.
Six months later, in March of this year, Andrews took a press conference before a friendly against Lithuania.
On both occasions his advocacy for Kenny was stout and to be expected.
Of course an assistant is invested in a project as much as the manager, but even with that qualifier applied, Andrews’ support was unstinting.
In that, Andrews echoed the loyalty that Roy Keane used to voice for Martin O’Neill.
In a scabrous comment in a 2020 interview, Keane went out of his way to criticise Andrews. ‘If I can make one point about the new Irish staff,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard a lot of bulls ****** s over the last 10 years and Keith Andrews is up there with the best of them’. As well as entertaining coaching ambitions, Andrews had developed a portfolio of punditry roles following his retirement from playing.
His style was best described as divisive, and a tendency to try and make every comment a ‘case closed’ pearl was irritating.
But his knowledge was detectable, and his enthusiasm unmissable.
He had been critical of Keane in his role as assistant to O’Neill, suggesting in 2018 that ‘his job title is assistant manager, and I just think that he is not assisting the manager’.
Given the sulphurous final months of Keane’s association with members of the squad as Ireland assistant, Andrews’ observation was fair. It was in 2018, after all, that Keane rowed with Jon Walters and Harry Arter at a training camp.
And in that appearance before the press in March, Andrews was asked about what Keane had said.
‘You might have to ask him why,’ he said. ‘In terms of how it affected me, it didn’t affect me in the slightest. I touched on it, about how passionate I am about this role. My conscience would be very, very clean in terms of what I put into it because, apart from family life, it is actually the only thing I care about, in terms of making this team better, in terms of making Irish football better, in terms of giving us a team we are proud to watch.
‘I have obviously been a fan, I’ve been a player, it is my only team. It is the only team I care about.
‘So, no, it didn’t affect me. When you go into a new job players pretty quickly suss you out, if you are not up to the level. So in terms of the preparation going into it was obviously of a high level.’
It was a competent, controlled answer that revealed the confidence that has inspired Andrews to this point.
He was a player whose career is best designated as that of a journeyman. Andrews played up and down the leagues in England, peaking with 85 games in the Premier League, the great majority coming across four seasons with Blackburn Rovers between 2009 and 2012.
Andrews, who turned 42 last week, also played 35 times for Ireland. He started all three matches at Euro 2012, and would have played every minute of Ireland’s miserable time there but for a red card late in the defeat to Italy. He was sent off for two yellow cards, and he later reflected on what it was to compete at a major tournament.
‘It was a lifelong dream in terms of playing in a major championship. I grew up not wanting to play for Manchester United or Liverpool, I wanted to play for my country,’ he explained.
The appeal of that passion to Kenny, another man who feels intensely the power of representing Ireland, is obvious. When he was named as Kenny’s assistant with the Under 21s, it caused some surprise as the two had no previous connection in the game.
‘We’d had a few conversations at Ireland games, nothing major,’ Andrews would subsequently
”His advocacy of Kenny was stout and to be expected” “Being named as assistant caused some surprise”
explain, ‘and then just basically a phone call to say would I be interested in just meeting up for a coffee and we just spent around four hours together talking about football.’
Their ideas chimed, and went as a team to the senior job. Andrews was still doing some punditry in the early months, but then sidelined that.
It’s not as if the manager and his assistant lacked for tasks, especially in that tumultuous first 12 months in the job, when Kenny’s viability as senior manager came under intense, deserved scrutiny.
If Andrews’ support was important then, his input as the team has slowly assumed the shape and acquired the effectiveness that Kenny desires should be noted.
He was asked in March if the appointment of Eustace, who was spending his first window with the group, changed his position.
‘I’ve been that constant around certain coaching aspects’ he replied, ‘but regardless of who it is, it’s been consistent in terms of Stephen and myself. I haven’t felt overlooked.’
The way Kenny clarified the pecking order last week emphasised the place of Andrews.
Irrespective of who is chosen to replace Eustace and fill a coaching position once again vacant, that won’t change.
Whatever Roy Keane thinks, Keith Andrews is at the heart of Stephen Kenny’s Ireland.