A street footballer from the Liam Brady mould, Hoolahan will grace a stage denied to Chippy
SOME 26 years on, the memory of a colleague phoning copy to his newspaper from a sticky hotel room in Malta remains vivid.
‘There is still time for Charlton,’ he barked, ‘to recall Liam Brady to the squad.’ He finished off on an imploring note. ‘Are you listening, Jack?’
Charlton didn’t listen, having coldly drawn a line through Liam Brady’s usefulness to Ireland’s World Cup crusade.
That ‘Chippy’ had just completed an outstanding season for West Ham, and was also venerated in Italy, was irrelevant. As far as Big Jack was concerned, Brady was a back number.
Since Brady’s unceremonious culling from the Irish team, only one midfielder has been blessed with a similar vision, a weight of pass and instinctive guile to unlock defences: Wes Hoolahan.
Like Brady, Hoolahan is a Dub, a street footballer who graduated from the jerseysfor-goalposts school of learning.
Just as Brady was 34 at Italia ’90, so Hoolahan has reached the same age as Ireland head into a major tournament.
Unlike Brady, however, who was shunted into cold storage by the Irish management, Hoolahan’s use to Ireland has never been more valued and Martin O’Neill is a huge fan to the extent he has shaped a midfield formation to play to Hoolahan’s strengths.
Indeed, if Hoolahan were struck down by injury this week and couldn’t play in Euro finals, Ireland’s prospects of progressing from Group E would become grim.
With the impish inner city kid on board, however, anything is possible. Not probable, but possible.
The French artist Edgar Degas once said that ‘everyone has talent at 25. The difficulty is to have it at 50.’
He is not far off the halfway point between the two, and still has it. That Hoolahan doesn’t have 75 caps by now, rather than 30, is an indictment of the blinkered ways of Giovanni Trapattoni who ignored the gifted schemer for four years.
But perhaps Trap wasn’t entirely to blame as Hoolahan only started to thrive in midfield when Norwich City boss Paul Lambert converted him from a left-winger at the start of the 2009-10 season.
At that time, Trap was halfway through a World Cup campaign and his favourites were established.
‘Paul Lambert took over at Norwich and changed my position from left-winger to number 10,’ recalled Hoolahan on Friday.
‘Being in the middle enabled me to get on the ball more. Paul found a position that suited me and got the best out of me.
‘He said he didn’t see me as a winger, he saw me more as a central midfielder, getting on the ball. That season I got a lot of goals and assists. It worked out that was my best position.’
By the time of the ill-fated 2014 World Cup qualifiers, Trap’s snowy head had turned and Hoolahan chalked up over 100 minutes in a creaky team that needed an overhaul.
He is now a regular under O’Neill and his focus is on the here and now. ‘I don’t look on the past,’ he said. ‘I look on the present and I’m enjoying what I’m doing now at the moment.
‘I’ve played about 30 times, to play that many is a great honour, and hopefully, you know, there will be a few more,’ he said, hinting at a post-Euro hurrah in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers.
The boyish Hoolahan could pass for 24 not 34, and insists Father Time is not tapping on his shoulder. ‘I’ve had a good season this year and I feel fit and ready, as fit as I did four or five years ago,’ he said.
His diet has become carefully scrutinised and is a far cry from his early days at Livingston and Blackpool after he left the League of Ireland at 24, having won three leagues title with Shelbourne.
‘Back then, you didn’t realise what a diet was, after a game it was a burger and chips and a few pints,’ he said. ‘Now it’s changed, you’ve got to look after yourself if you want to prolong your career and stay on top of your game
‘To stay in shape you’ve got to be disciplined. I love the game so that’s why I do it.’
Looking lean and lithe, Hoohahan is adamant the tight timetable in France won’t impact on his effectiveness.
‘If the gaffer wants me to pay three games in 10 days barring niggles or injury I’ll be fine,’ he said.
Hoolahan is a born survivor, as he could easily have slipped off football’s radar. ‘I was a bit of messer when I was a younger. I could easily have gone off the rails,’ he admitted when we spoke in 2002.
‘During my days at Belvo (Belvedere YC), I saw some players with great potential waste it because they didn’t have the right attitude.
‘I’m not saying that I was an angel, there was the odd Saturday night that I was out later than I should have been and maybe having a drink, but generally I put football first. You have to do that if you are to have any chance of making it.’
Make it he did, with guidance from his father Robbie who labelled him a street footballer, a tag he doesn’t disagree with.
‘He used to take me out quite a lot,’ recalled Hoolahan. ‘Where I was born and brought up (Portland Row), there were a lot of five-a-sides going on, a lot of football happening.
‘I think the days of going out on the streets and kicking a football are gone, it’s all about playing in parks and stuff like that. When I was younger, we were putting down jerseys to make goals, playing with a tennis ball.’
The rawness of that education has stood to Hoolahan, especially in the high altitude of international football where the slowslow-quick-quick pace of games suits his style.
‘It can be slower and you get more time on the ball, which suits me. The Premier League is hurly-burly with its fast tempo and you get kicked around.’
Always careful of what he says, Hoolahan admitted on Friday how much the Euro finals mean to him as ‘sometimes you think it will never happen.’
It finally has, albeit a bit later than he might have once hoped. At least, he will get to grace a major championship final with Ireland, something Brady was unfairly denied.