EMPTY PROMISE OF GREEN FUTURE
Rice’s England switch is a blow to Mick McCarthy’s plans for Euro qualification
WHEN the emotions about Declan Rice’s defection die down, the rage, the relief, the indifference, there is one inescapable consequence: the Republic of Ireland’s Euro 2020 qualification prospects have been damaged.
Mick McCarthy knows this better than anyone for the Irish manager imagined his team consisting of Rice and 10 others.
The 20-year-old defensive midfielder would have been to McCarthy what Paul McGrath was to Jack Charlton: indispensable.
But those plans were shredded at 4pm yesterday when Rice announced he was switching allegiances as ‘a proud Englishman’.
McCarthy’s 20-word reaction smacked of Barnsley bluntness. ‘Declan rang me today and said he has decided to give it a go with England. Good luck to him,’ he said.
Later, a second McCarthy statement was a little more expansive as he revealed he contacted Mark O’Toole, the FAI’s London-based scout who spotted Rice as a 14-year-old.
Pointedly, McCarthy said he was concentrating his efforts on ‘those (players) who want to play for us’.
Suddenly, the odds of 11/2 about Ireland topping Group D no longer appear tempting, which is a worry for McCarthy and the FAI, especially with four games in Dublin.
For all the gnashing of teeth over Rice giving Ireland two fingers in return for three green shirts, and online jibes how England have robbed Irish ‘Rice’ on top of potatoes, his decision to abscond will hit McCarthy hard.
McCarthy made a play for Rice in person and brought Robbie Keane as an ace up the sleeve when they met in London in December. Between them, they seemed the ideal sales team.
Born in Yorkshire to an Irish father, McCarthy could empathise with Rice’s sense of Englishness and how he had overcome his own awkwardness, while Keane could paint a vision of what it means to be an Irish hero. Yet their pitch failed. McCarthy may have suspected it was doomed from the start, even though he gave no indication of what was hurtling down the tracks at the League of Ireland launch on Tuesday.
He said he had ‘no news’ and spoke casually about his plans to keep players on their toes before the Euro double-header against Denmark and Gibraltar in June. He’d have loved Rice to be one of them, but it is not to be. Instead, Rice will be hoping his clearance papers come through from FIFA to allow him play for England in the Nations League finals. Once Rice had a change of agent last summer, a change of heart wasn’t far behind, not when England manager Gareth Southgate got in touch.
Southgate indicated he was prepared to fast-track Rice into a vibrant England team going places. When he showed Rice around St George’s Park, it might as well have been the home dressing room at Wembley.
With England, Rice will qualify for every tournament; with England, he will command a far greater salary at club level and enhanced commercial spin-offs.
For many, Rice is already a better player than Eric Dier, Jordan Henderson and Harry Winks as England’s midfield shield. He is a loss to Ireland, just as Harry Kane, who also has Irish grandparents, was a loss, too.
But Ireland cannot complain if high-calibre footballers born in England identify with the Three Lions rather than the shamrock. For that is entirely their right.
Imagine if birthplace was the sole arbiter of international allegiance, then London-born ‘Dubs’ Dave O’Leary and McGrath would never have played for Ireland.
Nor would the likes of Mark Lawrenson, Kevin Sheedy, Ray Houghton, John Aldridge, Andy Townsend, McCarthy, or centurion Kevin Kilbane, who used FIFA’s rules of lineage to become Irish football legends.
As McCarthy acknowledged last night: ‘We have availed of the ruling ourselves so we can’t complain about it.’
Preston-born Kilbane grew up in an Irish household and turned England down when they called for him at schoolboy level.
On the Rice story, he took a firm stance the moment the West Ham player asked then Irish manager Martin O’Neill not to consider him for Nations League duty last September. For Kilbane, that was the time to move on.
‘It shouldn’t have dragged on this long. I felt the decision was made by Rice a long time ago. Six months ago, he was gone.
‘Mick felt he had to go and speak
‘The manager made a play for Rice in person’
to him in person, along with Robbie. A part of him may have felt like picking up the phone and asking him straight up, “Are you with us or not?” That way, we could have moved on a lot quicker.
‘Mick is a practical manager and I can’t see him losing any sleep over it.’
On the broader implications, Kilbane said: ‘Looking ahead, we have to look at our system of developing homegrown players and also be careful of nurturing teenagers through the underage system who can then trip us up.’
Last month, a group of Irish football journalists were asked by the FAI to select their Senior Player of the Year for 2018 in time for the international awards gig in Dublin on March 19.
Ironically, there was one standout candidate: Rice, for no one played better in a grim year than he did against Turkey, France and USA.
In those games, all seemed sweetness and light for here was a class act who was so committed to the green jersey that he flew back from Antalya to play for the Under-21s against Azerbaijan in Dublin.
A few days earlier when Rice had collected the U19 Player of the Year gong he assured everyone there was ‘no decision to be made’ about playing for anyone else.
‘If I didn’t want to play for Ireland I wouldn’t be here picking up this award,’ he said.
It was a hollow promise.