‘If the poppy just represented the two World Wars, everybody here would respect it. But it represents everything, it represents all conflicts’
EVERTON AWAY, Saturday, November 10, 2012. Just another match.
Rory was studying in Liverpool and came to meet McClean in the team hotel on the eve of the game. They were sitting and chatting, eating a few sweets which is about as far as the bad eating habits goes.
It was Remembrance Day weekend and Sunderland were due to wear the now customary poppy embroidered shirt.
“Are you going to wear it?” Rory asked.
“I’ve asked them to bring a normal shirt,” said James, calmly.
That was more or less the extent of the discussion.
“We didn’t think any more of it,” said Rory, “I’m not sure if anyone had even mentioned it to him.”
The previous November, McClean was an unknown in his new surrounds, waiting for O’Neill to discover him.
Mistakes were made in tandem with the meteoric rise that brought him to Euro 2012. He was struggling to come to the terms with the power of his words; his tweets now had a reach of thousands, not hundreds. Senior pros admonished him for lashing out at Giovanni Trapattoni’s team selection in Kazakhstan.
But he did not consider the poppy-free shirt to be a provocative act. After the match, he flew to Dublin to pick up a prize at the PFAI awards. Eugene was with him and the chat was about the on-pitch duel with his pal Seamus Coleman. It was only upon their return to Derry, and a full perusal of the Sunday morning papers, that they realised a section of the British population now had a new public enemy number one. There were death threats. Outrage.
And questions. Why would he take English money without respecting their tradition? Why do the other Irish lads go through with it? The compliant Argentine players and the Falklands even got a mention.
Sunderland is a place with a strong affinity towards the armed forces and a section of fans were furious. The club were at pains to stress they supported the poppy appeal and McClean was urged to say nothing against his better instincts, and the storm clouds hung. He’d already waded into social media tiffs with Northern Ireland fans who chipped away at the fact he represented them at underage level before defecting when his lifelong ambition became attainable. “He would say himself that he used the system,” admits Rory.
By biting back, McClean stirred things up. His manager, O’Neill, was exasperated by the attention he was generating, and his performances suffered too with defenders getting to grips with the surprise package.
Eugene had finished college and was called by McClean’s agent, Graham Barrett, who proposed the idea that he would move across for a couple of months to help a mate that was living alone and suffering from a boredom that was leading him to type himself into trouble.
“The story was twisted,” says Eugene. “People thought I was employed by Sunderland. My granny had just passed away and my mate was going through a hard time and I went across to try and help get him back on track.
“He didn’t drive and was getting taxis everywhere. He’d be home from training at 1.0 and that was it for the day. We didn’t do much. Some days we might be on the PlayStation and not even talking to each other. His brother Patrick (who now plays for Waterford) came over and I think he thought we were really boring but James just needed the company. Erin moved across then too.”
The poppy furore meant fame had been replaced by infamy and hysteria. Political opinions and musical preferences that were part of his identity were flagged as an issue; Sunderland were angry with a tweet about his favourite Wolfe Tones song.
With his days numbered there, Wigan came next. The club’s owner, Dave Whelan, couldn’t understand McClean’s poppy perspective. In 2014, the player penned an open letter to Whelan which articulated a stance that boiled down to: ‘Unless you’re from Creggan, you don’t understand.’
That explanation is readily available, and there has been measured commentary on his position, but the catcalls will follow him as long as he plays in England. It’s a cheap anger generator; last weekend the ‘Huddersfield Examiner’ reported the West Brom man wouldn’t be wearing a poppy on his visit to town as if it was fresh news.
A rash tackle late in his sub cameo attracted a predictable torrent of abuse. “Convenient how Match of the Day cameras pick up my tackle but fail to pick up bottles, coins, and lighters being thrown,” he tweeted. Type ‘McClean’ and ‘poppy’ into any search engine and it’s easy to find the parish he will never win over. It includes West Brom followers.
Eugene hates this period of the year. “Any time there’s talk of James going to some club, the next question is, ‘Will they take a chance on him because of what the poppy thing brings?’ As his mate, and I’ve never told him this, I find that hard to take.”
But he will stay true to his beliefs. His viewpoint was clearly understood by those whose opinions mattered.
The family are sick of the coverage that presents their son as a bad boy. “It’s a myth,” says Waxsy, “It’s unbelievable because anyone who comes into contact with James, their views change in seconds. They soon realise he isn’t the monster he is portrayed to be.
“There was an awful lot of stuff happened around here and he’s old enough to know that. James is a proud, young, Catholic nationalist from a nationalist area. This is where he’s from. This is who he is. They expected him to be something he’s not, which wouldn’t be fair on James, his family or friends.”
O’Doherty gets animated when ‘the elephant in the room’ comes up.
“I would just love for people to examine what James said,” he says, his voice rising. “Please examine it. What he said was totally respectful. He’s speaking for everybody in this community. If the poppy just represented the two World Wars, everybody here would respect it.
“But it represents everything, it represents all conflicts. We’re all aware here the hurt was on every side, we get that. And if you don’t, you’re not human in my opinion. I can totally understand the hurt of the mother of a soldier in Sunderland if her son was damaged over here. But this is where I’m from.
“The death of Gerry Duddy’s brother is still unresolved. The British Army have done incredible damage to this area.”
Where critics saw dissent, Creggan saw courage.
“Just think about it,” says O’Doherty. “In a world of football dominated by obscene amounts of money that the ordinary person up here could never dream about it, just imagine having the moral fibre to do what James did. It would have been so easy to say, ‘Look, I’m earning my trade here. I don’t really like it, but I have to do it.’ He didn’t do that and that’s amazing... amazing. But unfortunately in this part of the country and in some parts of England, it gets taken in a different way.”
Colhoun, the Trojans stalwart, is a Northern Ireland fan who goes to Windsor Park regularly to cheer on Foylesiders Daniel Lafferty and Shane Ferguson.
He does hear chants about McClean and wishes the detractors knew the real person. “James is a not a bad soul,” he says. His West Brom clubmates Gareth McAuley, Chris Brunt and Jonny Evans, three senior members of Michael O’Neill’s Northern Ireland squad, found that the reputation contrasted from the reality. In August, Banbridge lad Jack Chambers spoke about how McClean had helped him since coming over from Linfield. “I didn’t really like him before but he has done nothing but help me,” said the teenager. “He keeps me going about the Protestant Catholic thing but it’s just banter. He’s been just as big a help as the Northern Ireland players.”
There is an ironic back story to McClean’s brief Northern Irish career. He didn’t have a passport for his maiden trip and, at 48 hours’ notice, securing one from Belfast was a no-go. An Irish passport would be accepted and, with the help of ex-Derry chairman Jim Roddy, O’Doherty was directed to Dublin and given a name that the youngster could drop to skip the queue and get fasttracked. When Peadar Carpenter, a helpful contact in the Department of Foreign Affairs, visited Derry in the following weeks, ‘Doc’ went in to buy him a drink and say thanks. “Well you never know,” replied Carpenter. “He might do a turn for us one day.”