The pressures on Ireland’s main men
McCarthy shows Irish bosses are best wearing hearts on sleeves
EVEN when it was over, when he’d agreed a financial settlement and was nudged off the back pages by Mick McCarthy, Martin O’Neill couldn’t let it go. On Thursday night, a story appeared in the London Times reporting O’Neill’s anger at Matt Doherty’s ‘old school’ coaching comments.
So annoyed was O’Neill, we were told, that he’d contacted Doherty in person to let him know what he thought. This vignette reinforced two elements in O’Neill’s character: firstly, his love affair with the British media and, secondly, his disdain towards those who questioned him.
O’Neill could have sat back, the king in his counting house, and let Doherty’s remarks slide but he had to react, partially because he never warmed to Doherty.
When the Wolves full-back was overlooked for selection, he suggested his ‘face didn’t fit’.
Finally called to competitive arms against Denmark last month, O’Neill referred to him as ‘young Doherty’ post-match and explained he’d picked Cyrus Christie in front of him to ‘keep an eye on him’.
‘Young Doherty’ is eight months older than Christie and at the time of the Denmark game, he’d played eight league games for Wolves, chalking up a goal and two assists. He was also voted the Premier League Player of the Month for September.
In contrast, Christie had two appearances for Fulham, one of which was at right-wing back in a 5-1 drubbing at home to Arsenal, after which he was dropped. If anyone needed minding, it was ‘young Christie’.
How ironic it is that O’Neill’s persistence with Christie in an unsuited midfield slot against the Danes last Monday contributed to his downfall as manager after five years of good, bad and indifferent with the Ireland team.
He oversaw some extraordinary results, against Germany home and away, against Italy in Lille and Austria in Vienna, while I felt the 2-2 draw in hostile Belgrade was another high.
By qualifying for Euro 2016 he joined Jack Charlton, McCarthy and Giovanni Trapattoni as the only Irish managers to reach a major tournament.
Had John Robertson been by his side rather than the combustible Roy Keane he might have taken Ireland to the World Cup and rivalled Charlton as Ireland’s alltime finest.
Instead, he ties third with Trapattoni in my rankings of Ireland managers over the past 35 years.
As a character, O’Neill was as difficult to predict as his teams were – he only picked the same XI twice, against Italy and France in the Euro finals, over 55 games as manager.
O’Neill arrived on a wave of goodwill and a pot of tea in the Gibson Hotel in Dublin, but left with little sympathy, even though his Boswells felt no one could have done any better as Irish manager.
O’Neill could come across as intelligent and witty, but there was a cold side to him too. Ask Tony O’Donoghue of RTÉ, who was regularly in the line of O’Neill’s narroweyed fire, even though he was just doing his job. That O’Neill never cultivated a relationship with any of us on the press beat was his choice. He opened up once, in August, when he gave a series of one-on-one interviews with daily football writers in Cork. In these pages, he revealed his fascination with American politics, NFL and his admiration for JFK, Roger Casement and Padraig Pearse, ideal companions in a fictional O’Neill sitting of ‘Come Dine With Me.’ He’d have enjoyed picking their brains while letting them know he knew his stuff too. THE first close-up with an Irish manager for a cub reporter in the
Evening Press was not pleasant. Eoin Hand was angry. He’d every right to be.
It was the summer of ’84 and followed an article about alcoholfuelled high jinks on board the airplane carrying the Irish squad back from the Japan Cup where they’d played China.
The information was sketchy but the paper splashed the story and Hand wasn’t pleased. He let a 22year-old reporter know what he thought and made it quite clear there’d be little co-operation going forward.
It was a chastening experience, from which I learnt two things: 1) Be sure of your facts, and 2) Hand’s bark is worse than his bite.
We went on to become good friends, especially when he joined the travelling media pack as RTÉ’s expert co-commentator alongside Gabriel Egan.
Once in Cyprus, Hand refereed the traditional pre-match kickabout by scribblers where he provoked out-rage with impish bias.
There was irony here as the Dubliner had been denied the right to lead Ireland to the ’82 World Cup finals by scandalous refereeing in Brussels.
Like O’Neill, Hand’s last game as manager was against the Danes, also in November. Unlike O’Neill, he had signalled his intent to leave beforehand.
By the time Ireland played again, the manager was a 50-year-old Geordie who’d won the World Cup with England and things would never be the same again.
Jack Charlton stayed for almost 10 years and led the team to three major finals out of four with a crude, yet effective, system of its time.
Like O’Neill, McCarthy and Trapattoni, he signed on for one campaign too many, but he elevated the team, and the nation, to places they’d never been to before.
Jack knew what he wanted from his players – it helped that he had a lot of good ones – and also knew how to play the press.
On Sunday nights in the International Airport Hotel, Jack would hold court in the bar with hacks while his players were out gallivanting. He knew it but, post-Sunday, the socialising stopped, and the players put their game faces on. Jack was generous with his time, and his anecdotes, but he was also a scrounger. He enjoyed free pints and fags in exchange for inside stories on who was fit and who wasn’t.
He used to read the Daily Mirror, which prompted some of us to ask was it because of their football coverage. ‘Nah, it’s for the Crossword. It’s is the only one I can figure out,’ he explained.
At the ’94 World Cup, Jack was so comfortable with the press, and us with him, there were hugely enjoyable quiz nights in his room in Orlando, where the stout ran freely from his own private keg.
Even when his time was up, before the Euro ’96 play-off against the Dutch in Anfield, Jack joined us for table football and held court for ages, grinning like a school kid every time he scored. ‘I do love playing up front,’ he beamed.
Jack didn’t read the papers much but one morning in the Nuremore Hotel he slapped the paper I was writing for at the time on the breakfast table and barked. ‘Who told you the bloody team?’
I’d predicted Ireland would play five across the middle, with Roy Keane on the right, having scaled a wall at Oriel Park the day before a sneak preview. TO appreciate what managing Ireland meant for Mick McCarthy, you have to scroll back to 1984, and that end of season low-profile game in Sapporo, a 19,000km round trip from Dublin.
For McCarthy, the trek meant missing his brother’s wedding, but what mattered most was the chance to establish himself in the squad having made his debut the week before at home to Poland.
For his Barnsley background, this son of Charlie McCarthy from Tallow, Co. Waterford, was fully committed to Ireland.
A further 18 summers would pass before McCarthy next put his foot down on Japanese soil. This was no Mickey Mouse tournament, rather the World Cup finals, and he was manager. By then, he’d had six years in the job, some good, one or two not so good.
He had two nightmares in Macedonia but Ireland chalked up seven
wins and three draws in a tough ’02 World Cup qualifying group – the best record in qualifying of any manager.
McCarthy did more press conferences than any other manager and was always straight up.
When the 3-5-2 formation blew up in his face in Macedonia, he sat in the grandstands with a knot of travelling reporters and admitted he was at fault for the system and for the players he was asking to play the system. It was shelved for the following game, against Romania.
At times, McCarthy could be edgy about press coverage, too much so. Before the second leg of the ’98 World Cup play-off against Belgium, he invited a couple of us to the team hotel in Brussels for a beer. We were sitting comfortably when McCarthy put on an edited recording of the first leg in Dublin and picked holes in a fellow reporter who wrote that Ireland had offered little going forward. Saipan was torture for McCarthy but he kept his dignity, and sanity, intact as the Keane row rumbled on. He felt the players were with him, but it wasn’t until they delivered against Cameroon in the opening game, that he could be certain. Spain were there to be beaten in Suwon but when that shoot-out went belly-up, I suggested he step down, as he was on a high. Stubborn fella that he is, he stayed. There is a huge slab of decency to McCarthy. When the opening games of Euro 2004 qualifying went badly against Russia and Switzerland, and cries of ‘Keano, Keano’ ran out around Lansdowne Road, he voluntarily resigned.
McCarthy had signed an improved contract in Seoul a few months earlier – John Delaney, the then-FAI treasurer, offered him a six-figure top-up to sign lest he walk away for nothing – but he never sought a cent in compensation. ON his appointment, Brian Kerr was regarded as ‘one of our own’, the first Irish manager to come from a League of Ireland background with no significant playing pedigree.
Kerr surfed a wave of amity on his unveiling in the Mansion House where the press corps were on his side, just as many this week championed Stephen Kenny, who has a similar CV, to succeed O’Neill.
Kerr brought back Roy Keane and stability, but couldn’t buy a break.
With the working press, Kerr could be short, at times, and he probably didn’t play that card to his advantage, especially when FAI knives were drawn.
His successor, Steve Staunton was an outrageous gamble by Delaney which back-fired as Stan illustrated that not all great players can become great managers.
Stan insisted on being called the ‘gaffer’. For a while, his team were more like Stan and Laurel as they leaked five goals in Cyprus and had a scare against San Marino.
By early 2008, the FAI dispensed with their image of an Association of cloth caps and bicycle clips by appointing serial winner, Giovanni Trapattoni.
Whatever about the players – who eventually grew weary of the repetitive training sessions – the press loved the snowy-haired Italian.
He didn’t give a fig what was written – much of it was positive – and his respect towards pen-pushers was always evident.
The guy could manage, too, and his team were at their peak when denied by Thierry Henry’s thievery in Paris which robbed Trap of his team to take Ireland to the 2010 World Cup.
If Trap was a serial name-dropper, he post-match briefings were allticket affairs as he volunteered a detailed analysis of the game.
Trap left with dignity. When it was over, it was over. Perhaps O’Neill could have learned from him.