O’Neill’s barbed comments still have a sting in the tale

LIKE the scorpion and the frog crossing the river, Martin O’Neill can’t help himself when it comes to stinging the Irish journalists who reported on his tenure as Republic of Ireland manager.

In an interview published this week, O’Neill returned to one of his specialist subjects – media-bashing. It’s something he’s become accomplished at, for reasons best known to his cerebral self.

According to O’Neill, he never won over the Irish media and ‘was made to feel like an outsider’. He claims ‘they were almost looking for the team to lose so they could have a go at me.’ Whoever ‘they’ were.

Worst of all, he says he ‘was called the Ulsterman’.

O’Neill is talking baloney. And not for the first time either.

On foot of O’Neill’s claims, the Irish daily newspaper hacks who reported on O’Neill’s five years checked out this week who among us had ever described him as ‘the Ulsterman’ in print. No one had.

One newspaper twice referred to O’Neill as being from Northern Ireland, which seemed fair as O’Neill was a distinguished captain of Northern Ireland.

As for ‘looking for the team to lose’ that’s another myth. No one ever wanted the team to lose.

If O’Neill could set aside his prejudices, he’d see the reportage of his time was not only fair but, on many occasions, there was plenty of entirely merited praise.

I’d rate O’Neill’s feats with Ireland comparable to Mick McCarthy and Giovanni Trapattoni.

There were many great days, against Germany, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria,

Wales, Italy, and France too, in Euro 2016. Unlike the majority, I thought O’Neill was justified in gambling with his substitutions at half-time against Denmark in the 2018 World Cup play-off – the last time Ireland got a sniff of a major final.

O’Neill never went out of his way to establish any professional links with the Irish-based beat reporters.

Predictably, this week’s interview was with a friendly UK-based hack in the Daily

Telegraph, one of a favoured set invited to the Irish team hotel by the manager for tea and toast.

In the article, the author doffs a cap to his subject by writing how O’Neill rarely gives interviews these days. Perhaps that’s just as well when he serves up such nonsense.

That he feels the need at 72 to throw barbs at those who gave him every respect and courtesy as Irish manager smacks of a bitterness that is uncalled for.