Hurlers end the year on a high with win in Kilkenny

IN the crumbling old Lansdowne Road they turned on him. Looking for a head. Jeering and whistling on the full-time whistle. Frustration that had been building for months exploded once more into the open that October night. The civil war raged on.

In hindsight it was foolishness to think it was behind us and behind him. It was too recent. The feelings too raw. The last shot of the war begun in Saipan was fired that night and with it Mick McCarthy’s first tenure as Irish manager was terminated.

When the calls went up at half-time for ‘Keano’, McCarthy must have thought what an ungrateful lot the Irish fans were. Had he not brought them to a World Cup? Got them out of the group? Given them the magic of Ibaraki? No matter, they wanted him gone.

Surely it will be with a wry eye that the Barnsley man regards the Irish support this weekend against Gibraltar. A man of his experience and intelligence will know it’s all a big game, a carousel he’s simply stepping back onto.

He’ll know too that those greatly cheered by his return will soon turn on him once more if results don’t go his way. A bacon slicer is still a bacon slicer even if emblazoned with the green, white and orange.

Still it clearly means more to McCarthy because of that. The Irish job is not just a pay check to him. There’s unfinished business. There’s the chance to remind everybody what it was they loved about him in the first place. The chance to leave on his terms – inasmuch as is possible given he’s out after two years regardless of how he fares.

There’s a certain liberation in the fact of that too. As there is in coming in after the dog days of the O’Neill era. McCarthy won’t have to do much other than not being Martin O’Neill to get the fans on side.

A real sense of hopelessness and pointlessness had taken over. Not to mention a stultifying boredom. Whatever else McCarthy may be he’s not boring, his football is not boring. Neither is he taciturn, or fed up.

Mick can be what he couldn’t have been in that autumn of 2002, a breath of fresh air, an antidote to the maladies which ail Irish football. It’s good to have him back. Fantastic even.