A top manager should have no need for this embarrassing nonsense...
IN CASE anyone needed reminding, this thoroughly bizarre controversy emphasises sport’s deepest truth: results justify everything. Were Stephen Kenny in charge of an Irish team that was scoring goals and winning some games, he could play two of the Wolfe Tones in midfield and the decision would be cheered nationwide.
But Kenny has not won any of his eight matches in charge so far, and while the mitigating circumstances are significant and constantly rehearsed, the basis for this controversy, minor in its immediate circumstances, may point up other factors in his difficult start.
It does not speak to a harmonious atmosphere when a member of the manager’s support staff complains about the content and nature of a pre-match motivational video.
And for all the moronic anger online decrying rats and malign influences, that someone was moved to make a complaint reveals a problem.
No sporting set-up is entirely carefree, but successful managers find a way of reconciling all parts of their staff behind a common goal.
It appears Kenny failed to do that before the match against England, and it is reasonable to wonder if the problems predated Wembley and if they have persisted since then.
And this, in turn, raises the possibility that there has been more than bad luck to Ireland’s slow start under their new manager.
The prospect of Kenny losing his job as a result of this controversy is remote, as it should be. A misguided motivational video should not cost him his job, but the emergence of news of the video, and reactions to it, shows that all is not well in his regime.
There is a second issue raised by the video, and it is the deployment of a management technique from a bygone age.
Seeking to stoke patriotic ardour in players by mention of 1916 is not offensive, but it is misguided and terribly quaint.
There is, firstly, the issue of those players who were not born in Ireland and who may feel an attachment to England by dint of growing up there.
Identity is not a matter of either/or, a fact that is much more appreciated now than once upon a time. It is reasonable for a player to represent Ireland, having qualified through a parent or grandparent, but also feel English.
That is no longer a rare situation or one of delicate subtle ty. It is easy to understand why someone from such a background might find wrap-thegreen-flaground-me expressions of Irishness unsettling.
But even for those players born and reared in Ireland, mention of 1916 and what it implies about perfidious Albion is a dated way of trying to inspire them.
Showing players a motivational montage including goals from Euro 88 and Italia 90 makes sense because of its meaning in Ireland’s soccer past, but allusions to decades- old conflicts is odd and has a jaded echo of old Irish motivational methods for games against England.
Those days should be in the past. Rugby teams regularly went to Twickenham fuelled on anger about the Famine.
They lasted 20 minutes, before better- coached and more talented players humiliated them.
Kenny was championed in large part because his methods were said to be modern and he brought a cutting-edge sensibility to a role that had been held by men whose best days in management were mostly concentrated in the last century. Kenny would bring a way of doing business more readily appreciated by young professionals, even if the great majority of the players at his disposal are playing at level some way below the elite tier of the British game.
It was instructive that one of the few who is not, Matt Doherty of Spurs, was commendably frank in assessing how Ireland played in that England friendly.
‘ It’s disappointing and i t’s embarrassing,’ said Doherty, and aspects of that defeat were both.
Ireland’s often abject performance in that match must now be viewed with the knowledge that part of the pre-match routine involved playing on ancient Irish attitudes. It didn’t affect the result, but nor does it speak to effective modern preparations.
A manager working at the sharpest edges of the sport should have no need for that kind of embarrassing nonsense.
That is the really interesting aspect of this story, one expertly broken by this publication’s sister newspaper: the insights it grants to Kenny’s operation.
It is only one incident, and the heat will retreat from this controversy. But the damage it does to the manager will persist if results don’t improve.
And it’s back to that subject. If Ireland start winning in the spring, this will be remembered, if at all, only as a bump along the way to a better future.
It has to be recognised, too, that there has been encouraging proof of Kenny’s tactics taking hold — in the match against Slovakia but also at home to Wales and away to Finland.
Retirements, injuries and illness have all worked against steady progression, but Ireland have to help themselves.
Kenny will surely be keen to introduce any new measures required to guard against the virus breaching the team bubble in future, for instance.
It would make sense to consign the history lessons to the past. Leave talk of rebellions and conquerors to school rooms and barstool lecturers.
The manager must, instead, work to convince players, staff and supporters that his vision for the Irish team is realisable.
Next month’s World Cup draw could leave Kenny with a forbidding to-do list.
The man should have plenty to consume him on the pitch. Off it, he will, one imagines, tread a good deal more carefully around matters of identity and history.
Inspiration remains an important area of preparation, but a modern manager should not have to rummage in Ireland’s exhaustively miserable past for it.
‘A winning Kenny could put the Wolfe Tones in midfield and be cheered’