That little bit of Mick McCarthy that’s in all of us

THE odd thing is, we have a chance against the Danes. We have a chance because it’s a game of football, and we know for sure that we have to win.

The odder thing is that we had very little chance of winning against Georgia, and none whatsoever against Switzerland.

Indeed, Ireland played for a draw against Georgia, and that is what we got — because when those players look at Mick McCarthy, and they try to figure out what he wants from them, they know that in the depths of his soul, he will always take the draw.

He’d like to “nick it” at the end, but they know that he will take the draw — and generally if players have figured out what the manager will take, they will not feel too bad about giving it to him.

Against Switzerland, we were doomed, and not just because they are better than us. Once we know that we have to win one of two games, and the manager is Mick McCarthy, there’s a tremendous chance that we’ll still be looking for that win in the second game.

We know this, the players know this, because we know Mick — and we know Mick because he is one of us, to the extent that there has probably never been a manager of an international side who is so in tune with the national character of the people he represents.

That thing he does when he mentions hypothetical offers which he might have received before the tournament — “if you’d offered me a draw here, I’d have bitten your arm off ” — there’s a bit of that in all of us, certainly when it comes to international football, but not just that.

A lack of entitlement, you might call it. Always the sense that if you haven’t made a total disgrace of yourself, it has not been an entirely bad day’s work. And a certain lack of logical rigour in these non-existent propositions which are as fanciful in their own way as Mick coming out and saying that we’d have done better against Georgia if Cristiano Ronaldo had been offered to us, and Mo Salah.

We identify, too, with Mick’s deep sensitivity in the face of hard questioning, like when he challenges reporters about the fact that they haven’t played the game professionally. Again, this elevates emotion above reason; indeed, it abandons reason altogether — and which of us has not done that at least once in the past week alone?

One thing we will not be questioning is the commitment of Mick and of the lads. Because they are good lads.

All through his career, indeed at various small-to-medium-sized clubs, he has enjoyed working with Irish lads, because they are good — good lads, that is, which is not quite the same thing as being good at football. They are lads, like the mysterious “Collins” of Luton Town, who will “do a job”, and do it well, as long as that job doesn’t involve scoring a goal against Switzerland in a crucial qualifier.

In the mind’s eye, you could just about see Shane Long doing that, but Long-y wasn’t in the squad, perhaps because he wasn’t considered... well, good enough.

We have become accustomed to this idea of clinging desperately to what we have, even if we don’t have very much at all — we point to the fact that we have only had one worldclass player in the past 30 years as justification of this. And we even managed to lose that one, Roy Keane, overboard in Saipan. Or rather, Mick did. But because we fear embarrassment more than we love glory, we have become dysfunctional to the extent that even with the modest talents available to us, we somehow manage to be always leaving out players who are better than the ones on the park. We should be officially naming it Wesley Hoolahan Syndrome.

Indeed, the previous management reflected that Irish lack of selfesteem to such an extent that they were slow to tie down Declan Rice and Jack Grealish for the Republic. As if it would be morally wrong to entrap them in this way, when a far better country might come along for them.

Even the million quid a year that the manager was getting then couldn’t bring a bolder attitude — and here is another way in which the football team reminds us of much that ails us, with our managers usually being paid far more than they should be, much like the beneficiaries of the RTE star system.

But I’m getting annoyed now, so I’ll stop before I change my mind and say that in truth, against Denmark, we haven’t a prayer.

‘If you haven’t made a disgrace of yourself, it hasn’t been an entirely bad day’s work...’