Kenny brings the hope

WHAT’S this strange sensation we’ve been experiencing of late when it comes to Irish football? It’s not at all like the feeling we’ve had when looking on at events in Abbotstown for the last eighteen months or so. It’s a lot more, dare we say it, positive. There’s none of that sort of head-inour-hands cringe, jaw-dropped incredulity or righteous indignation we’ve become so familiar with.

No this is very different. It’s something a lot more like hope and the man we have to thank for that is Stephen Kenny. His early – by a couple of months – elevation to the Irish hot-seat has given Irish football a new impetus and a fresh start. Everything about him just gives you this warm fuzzy feeling that this time things will be different. The way he sees the job as a holistic one and not just as a sort of a dash-in and dash-out for international weeks nixer as some previous managers might have done.

There’s the way he wants his teams to play, with positivity and panache. The same way he had his Dundalk side playing and succeeding in Europe beyond anybody’s dreams for a League of Ireland outfit, putting paid to the notion that you need Messi and Ronaldo to play decent football.

We loved the way during his online press conference last weekend he spent eleven minutes outlining how he wants his midfield to play when asked a question by respected football writer David Sneyd. No we don’t particularly want to listen to an eleven minute technical dissertation on midfield play, but we do want to have an international manager who can and who wants to. Kenny’s willingness to talk football and to engage with the media (and by proxy) the public is really encouraging after the dourness of Martin O’Neill. Mick McCarthy certainly was more engaging, but only to a point. Kenny is much more of an evangelist. After one of the most bruising years Irish football has ever endured it really does feel like Kenny is the right man, in the right place, at the right time. What a relief.