If you want to go, go now Martin – there’s no point prolonging the process
AS the sullen, shell-shocked and understandably scaldy faces of some of the Ireland players left the home dressing room and traipsed past the awaiting media at Aviva Stadium to the team bus late on Tuesday night, black humour took over. Player ratings were exchanged. ‘What you give him?’ ‘Three.’ ‘And him?’ ‘Three.’ ‘And him?’ ‘Another three.’ Ouch. Glenn Whelan headed for the exit and a swift return to life in the English Championship with Aston Villa. His vow of silence began long ago so it has long been accepted not to bother him.
He will be 34 next time the squad meets up. By that point, Ireland’s most capped midfielder may have decided to call it a day.
‘Any last words, Glenn?’
David Meyler, captain for the night but hauled ashore at half-time, ignored pleas for any sort of explanation of the night’s events.
A gaggle of squarejawed security men buzzed about, scoping the small media pen with glares of disdain. Perhaps if a couple of them had been deployed in the centre of midfield Christian Eriksen wouldn’t have had the run of the place all night.
Kasper Schmeichel, draped in a Danish flag, was all smiles and compliments as he sipped on a bottle of lager and toasted his country’s qualification for Russia next summer. It was quite the contrast to the tetchy and undignified – bordering on hostile – end to Ireland’s night which everyone hoped would be one of glory and triumph. Instead: Ireland 1 Denmark 5. ‘End of the world.’ ‘Crying Shame.’ ‘Dreams Shattered.’ ‘Down and out.’ ‘Danish pasting.’ ‘Dane-ger here.’ The headlines in the aftermath of a trouncing that will be difficult to erase from a proud sporting consciousness. ‘Dane-four’ would surely have been on that list too, had James McClean not given away a late penalty which allowed Nicklas Bendtner make it 5-1 and inflict the heaviest play-off defeat on a team since Spain eased past Slovakia 6-2 over two legs to reach the 2006 World Cup.
The result will remain etched in the psyche of players and supporters, not to mention management. Just as much as those emotional montages of past glories – Houghton putting the ball in the English net in Stuttgart, his lob and tumble in Giants Stadium, Bonner and O’Leary in Genoa, Keane’s gun slinging in Ibaraki, the night of the Long knife against Germany, Brady’s header in Lille – will be forever used to stir the senses, Tuesday’s hammering will become a part of Irish football’s lexicon.
This was an Ireland team you could trust to deliver. It is by no means pretty under Martin O’Neill, and there have been slips, but they always seemed steady. Goal by goal, that sense of trust has been eroded by Denmark.
There will be no quick fix, no easy remedy to rid the scars, which is why O’Neill has gone on holiday to take stock. He is, according to reports in one English paper with a handle on his thinking, considering his future and debating whether the job is worth the hassle given what he sees as a lack of appreciation for his achievements with a ‘limited group of players’. Businessman Denis O’Brien’s healthy contribution to O’Neill’s millioneuro plus salary should help ease the pain of the plentiful criticism which has come his way following the nature of the collapse.
O’Neill’s players, meanwhile, have returned to the daily grind but it will gnaw away at them, too, as they fight their individual battles at club level.
There is no international fixture of significance for almost a year: September 2018 is when the UEFA Nations League gets underway and the first Euro 2020 qualifier in March 2019. That means losing out on a place at the World Cup in such dispiriting circumstances has the potential to fester.
The FAI must learn the lessons of the past and not allow it to do so. With a new contract for the manager already agreed in principle and the people in power at Abbotstown keen to get it signed, they must persevere with their convictions for the good of Irish football.
‘We’re capable of coming back from it,’ O’Neill said not long after Tuesday’s final whistle. ‘We’ve been beaten but beaten in a playoff game,’ he added, for context. ‘In the end we’ve lost a play-off game to take us to the World Cup. We’ll come back again.’
If O’Neill is wavering, then the decision is easy, cut him loose and bid him a fond farewell. There is nothing to be gained from prolonging the process.
The FAI cannot allow the events of the past week to gnaw at the core of this group. You only have to look at the reasons O’Neill got the Ireland job in the first place to see the detrimental effect keeping someone in charge for too long can have.
Simon Cox was one of Giovanni Trapattoni’s golden boys and after the chastening experience of Euro 2012 (three defeats from three, goals 1-10), he started the first game of what proved to be a disastrous 2014 World Cup qualifying. Ireland scraped a 2-1 win away to Kazakhstan, courtesy of two late goals, and the malcontents reacted.
‘Delighted as a fan we got the win,’ tweeted unused sub James McClean, who ended his message in considerably less polite language. Callum O’Dowda, dropped after the first leg in Copenhagen, took a different approach this time. ‘A hard fought qualifying campaign has come to a disappointing end. But this is not it, the Irish spirit continues!’
Such positivity cannot be taken as a given.
‘A couple of things need to happen now,’ Cox (left) feels. ‘Firstly, the manager and Roy Keane need to decide what they are doing. Are they staying or not? A decision needs to be made. And secondly, the next time the squad gets a chance to join up, the manager, whoever it may be, needs to get smiles on players’ faces again and get Tuesday out of their system. There will be pressure when they come back and the players are going to have to deal with that.’
Neither is this the point at which we can prepare for the radical overhaul of the youth system. Calls this week for the return of Brian Kerr are, ultimately, pointless. It is not going to happen. The FAI has its own plans in place for underage football and Kerr does not figure. The senior manager will have to deliver results and with the expanded European Championships easier to negotiate and the World Cup finals soon to include 48 teams, shortterm thinking will still pay off more often than not. A play-off defeat, regardless of how disheartening, will not be enough of a catalyst for a reaction.