From national football icon to national broadcaster clickbait, Eamon Dunphy’s career has been an immense one. From ‘not a great player’ who was good enough to represent his country 23 times, to a coach with a vision for the domestic game at Shamrock Rovers, then onto a new career as a powerful sports journalist and author, he is now in danger of petering out as some sort of parody of himself. But as he proved recently when waxing lyrical on Juventus’ first leg triumph over Monaco, when he is good he is compelling and a joy to listen to. But when he’s bad, he’s dreadful. His weekly headline-making nonsense on RTÉ radio comes across like a contractual obligation to provide content for the website every Tuesday morning and does him no favours.
Dunphy’s schtick is beginning to get boring. And old. Primarily because he is 71 years of age and there’s is nothing he has not seen, and nothing he has not said. But one day he will retire, and that will be a very sad day for Irish football. Yard of Grass is a fan of Eamon Dunphy’s, because in my view no-one in these islands views the game in the same way as Eamon and no-one frames the sport in the same way. Context and culture drive everything you see on the pitch. It’s not just a game. Football is an expression of your environment and your society. The reason Juventus held out 2 of the most lethal attacks in Europe this season is the same reason Jack Charlton removed the midfield from Ireland’s play. It’s in their blood. Dunphy gets that. And has expressed that brilliantly over many, many years.
He’s had his moments however. In recent years it was his blindness to the clear brilliance of Cristiano Ronaldo. While his criticisms of his style were correct, his damning “this fella Ronaldo is a cod” quote must haunt him to some extent. At the time, Ronaldo was blowing hot and cold, and his cheating and attitude stank. But when he was hot, he was unplayable, and has remained so ever since. His total demolition of Atletico recently just being the latest in a litany of domineering performances, while dragging Portugal to a title sets him above Messi on the international stage.
Dunphy has always tended to the absolutist – the extreme view, when the more nuanced was necessary. His stance on matters Irish have at times divided the nation, in particular on our managers and styles of play. He enraged many during Jack Charlton’s glorious reign. In this case, a more nuanced approach certainly would have served the viewing public better. He was of course absolutely right about the style of play and the disgraceful treatment of players like Liam Brady and Ronnie Whelan. The former banished entirely, the latter getting only 27 minutes in Italia 90. But we did get to last 8 of that World Cup. We beat England and Italy in major tournaments. We qualified for 3 out of 4 tournaments having qualified for none previously. This was a time for measured critique. Yes the display against Egypt was abominable, but it was in a World Cup! For the first time.
Dunphy explains the famous “pen-throwing” episode very well in “The Rocky Road”. His anger was not just about the football, but as I referred to earlier, the context and the culture around it. For the first time in his life, his game was to the forefront of Irish life. Tarred as a shoneen; a garrison-game loving west-brit; brought up in a land where non-Gaelic players were effectively persecuted by a holy trinity of bastards who defined “true Gaels” as GAA lovers (and haters of all other sports by definition, especially British sports), Catholics, and Fianna Fail voters, Dunphy speaks of that same land gripped by football fever as he made his way to Montrose that day. It felt as if all 3 million “true Gaels” were watching the great sport of Giles, Brady, Best, Blanchflower and Jackie Carey. Having held the Brits at their own game days earlier, recognition at long last had come to the Irish football community from the plain people of Ireland. As he puts it “an end to sporting apartheid, the moment when our beautiful game of soccer would be recognised, and those who loved it would finally be assimilated into Irish culture”.
Then the game happened. And Dunphy was fucking ragin’. Perhaps he was naively over-optimistic and caught up in the externalities, when he should have known Charlton would serve up 90 minutes of more dross. Sure the England game was a dog as well! But he wasn’t perhaps fully mentally prepared for the sheer awfulness. And his criticism backfired on him as he was vilified here and in Italy, recounting in “The Rocky Road” the real fear he felt as he made his way to Palermo for the Dutch game. But the bandwagon and the new Irish soccer fan-base rumbled on as we made our way out of the group and to a day which stands 27 years on as a touchstone in Irish history. Another shite match but a glorious victory against Romania. Eamon was probably content to – at least temporarily – put analysis to one side, as the country went into total meltdown for the game he was told he should never play. He details how he watched men who never set foot inside Dalymount or Milltown break down in tears. He comes across as slightly perplexed as to how this bandwagon ever started and how it would end. Almost 3 decades on, thankfully, nothing still quite convulses the country like the travails of the Boys in Green. Our generation is used to soccer standing proudly on the front pages – Dunphy’s was not. But on the substance of the Charlton debate, Eamon was right. Ireland’s game against Egypt was football’s nadir, an example used to justify changing a fundamental aspect of the game – the ability of goalkeepers to pick up back passes. We will never forget drawing our way to the last 8 in the World Cup. But we should also never forget that it was the worst football tournament in living memory.
We all know enough about Saipan and Dunphy’s relationship with Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy. Best to leave that aside and focus on a period when Dunphy’s absolutism was spot on – the Trappatoni era. Again, we were managed by a foreign coach after a relatively successful but unlucky period under Mick McCarthy; the inability of Brian Kerr to meet expectations; and the slow unravelling clusterfuck that was Steve Staunton’s reign. Trap was different. His was a truly world class appointment. Italian football management royalty. We initially warmed to his eccentricities, and the team in their first campaign played their way back into the nation’s hearts in that play-off in Paris when we were cheated out of an opportunity to get to the World Cup in South Africa.
Things began to go awry very quickly however. The qualification for Euro 2012 was probably the worst successful campaign of them all. Slaughtered home and away by Russia – somehow dragging a point home from Moscow – we beat no-one of any consequence home or away, labouring to dreadful wins at home to Macedonia and Armenia, while drawing with a poor Slovakian side. In Dunphy’s view – and most observers – we had sacrificed midfield completely. Andrews and Whelan were immovable first choices. No creativity. Andy Reid had become Dunphy’s hobby horse before this campaign, a man left out for playing the guitar too late at night. Reid is no world beater, but his ability to make things happen was sorely lacking. As the campaign went on and as qualification loomed, more and more names were added to the “where the fuck are they?” list. James McClean was hitting his stride at Sunderland. Séamus Coleman was emerging as the classy full-back we all know in a decent Everton side. And Wes Hoolahan was also knocking on the door. Of these only McClean travelled to Poland, and he did not get a look in. While the shoddy treatment of Kevin Foley would become typical of this regime. Trappatoni’s performance at Euro 2012 was a disgrace. And it only got worse when the Germans battered us 6-1 at home in the next campaign. Finally he was let go.
This period really angered me. On one side you had the apologists claiming we just didn’t have the players. Trap was making as much as he possibly could. On the other you had the likes of Dunphy pulling for decent players whose reputation grew and grew the less and less they featured. None of the Trap absentees were truly world class. But they were better than what was on the pitch. There is absolutely no bone in my body that does not believe we would not have been a far better side with the likes of Wes, James McClean and Coleman in Poland and at the start of the following campaign. Ditto for Andy Reid in earlier campaigns.
Dunphy’s criticism of Trappatoni was not simply that he picked the wrong players, but that he had no respect for Ireland as a footballing nation. We were minnows without any talent in his view. We must play a British style to compensate. A reasonable view if Paul Green and Simon Cox are on the park, but not if Wes Hoolahan and James McClean are sitting at home!
I enjoy Eamon mainly when he is commenting on teams I have no interest in. His recent coming out as a Liverpool fan does not make up for any criticism I’ve disagreed with. And his analysis of Ireland no longer carries the weight it perhaps once did because we’ve heard it too much before from the same voice. But on Champions League nights or during tournaments, I find his views often compelling, even when bloody inaccurate. And he is becoming more and more inaccurate as time goes on. His grá for the absolutist view is most tiresome when he is decrying the end of footballing empires on the basis of a single defeat. As such, I believe it is time for someone new on RTÉ, but I think he deserves the right to choose the time, unlike John Giles, who was effectively let go a few years ago.
Unfortunately it will be extremely difficult to replace Dunphy. It’s only when you watch the pantomime boiler-plate faux rage of Joe Brolly or the tabloid hackery of Chris Sutton that you realise the critical additional ingredient Dunphy brings to Irish football analysis that is rarely seen elsewhere – passion. True passion. A man not afraid to show his emotion. A man willing to allow himself to well up and allow his voice to quiver on live television. Talking about our sport. Our culture. Like when he eulogises the old Dublin street footballing tradition, you get the feeling that every little shimmy Wes does on the Lansdowne pitch in 2017 was seen a million times by Eamon on Richmond Road in the 1950’s. And perhaps in his view it was taken out of the Irish game by foreign footballing butchers.
We could go on for days about Eamon Dunphy and this post is one of my longest. I’m sure some of you, if you got this far, are tearing your hair out at my positive view of him, but I care about that as much as he probably does.
Enjoy him…
A Yard of Grass 