Where did it all go wrong? As I rose to my feet to acclaim Wes Hoolahan’s artful curler into the bottom corner of the Swedish net in Paris, from a perfect Seamus Coleman cutback, I thought maybe – just maybe – we’d finally cracked this football lark for the first time since 2002. Nothing that happened in the rest of that tournament called for revision of that view. Martin and Roy were getting the best out of these lads. And, as I said here, we were back in love with the Boys in Green. A phenomenal start to the World Cup campaign had us dreaming. O’Neill’s terseness in interviews could be brushed off as an affectation – a grumpy oul fecker but our oul fecker, and more importantly a successful one. Then it all went wrong…
A diabolical, truly bloody diabolical performance against Georgia, then Serbia and the whole thing fell asunder. Regardless of the fact that we squeaked past Wales, and made the play-offs, this was a bad group with no great teams in it. And moreover, we were in a position to win it, but ended up needing a Celtic implosion from our Welsh and Scottish cousins to get us a play-off. And no matter how he tries to spin it, Martin O’Neill absolutely blew the 2-legged battle with the Danes. He blew it. With the sort of tactical incompetence and naivety you wouldn’t get away with playing Football Manager 2 in 1989 (fast forward to 1:00 or so – man the shite we had to put up with!!!).
I was happy to leave the events of the past fortnight alone. The uncontrollable hooplah over his contract and the Stoke interest had me reaching for the off-switch on many occasions. Hourly updates from the JoeBalls-erati had me banging my head against a brick wall. In essence, a man with a job may be interested in another job. So fucking what! It happens in every walk of life.
The FAI, as is their wont, again made this innocuous event seem like the apocalypse through their peasant style of administration – “sure say nuttin’ lads”. What was a molehill, albeit not an insignificant one, became a mountain. Why, oh why, this shower of slack-jawed goms insist on announcing contracts that have not been signed is beyond comprehension. And a clause saying he can speak to clubs is no big deal. Having an international manager in demand is a good thing! And the fans don’t bloody care that much!!! There was no need to announce anything back in October before we’d even got out of the group. We all have lives outside the Irish national team to be getting on with. We have clubs to support and families to feed for jaysus sake. We didn’t really mind if O’Neill walked in November after our elimination either. He’d just gifted a World Cup place to Denmark by losing 5-1. In fucking Dublin! Just get on with your damn jobs and tell us something when you have something to tell us. But no, we have to look like we’re working and chief slack-jaw Delaney had to dribble out some half-baked announcement before we’d finished the group to appease some imaginary set who were demanding something! Amateur hour. Again. Peasants. Again – sure aren’t we lucky to have him, didn’t he do great coming 3rd in the last qualifying group and getting to the Euros – standards exceeded in qualifying by Charlton and McCarthy every time, by Trapattoni twice out of three attempts, and matched by both Kerr and Staunton once each. Hardly a ringing endorsement of that particular campaign despite O’Neill’s insistence that it’s proof of his genius – you can strike humility of his list of attributes now too!
I was going to let all that go despite the nonsense over the past fortnight. In my view, O’Neill was still in the black. But only just. Then today happened. Today we drew Wales and Denmark in the European Nations League and Martin O’Neill gave this interview to Tony O’Donoghue.
The “grumpy oul fecker” – someone I was willing to give some latitude to, the almost comically “tetchy” interviewee – was full-on straightforward unpleasant yet again to the RTE man. Tony O’Donoghue has not once asked an unreasonable question. In my view, he has represented the Irish football public, i.e., done his job, very, very well in the face of extremely testing conditions under the current regime. Some people may disagree with that and back O’Neill to the hilt. Many of these people will have green and white hooped shirts in their wardrobes – and not the Irish ones with Woodies or Pepper on the front. I’m not interested. His rant today was unacceptable, and ranks alongside his dreadful, dreadful dismissal of O’Donoghue after the turd Ireland served up in Tbilisi last year.
He is now no longer in the black as far as I’m concerned and it’s hard to see how we can respect him again. I disagreed fundamentally with those who compared the 5-1 to the 6-1 we suffered at home to Germany under Trap. One was a second leg play-off defeat after a 0-0 away first leg where we did admittedly have to chase the game, in a successful campaign (2nd place after being seeded 4th – very few other statistics matter) after a successful enough tournament; the other was a humbling in a qualifier after a shockingly poor tournament. It did not signal the end of an era to me. But the stench around the regime today is beginning to overpower us.
Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane need to deliver something spectacular in 2018. We need to see a new approach in the friendlies in the first half of the year and we need to see ambition in the Nations League. No-one expects us to win that group by the way, but we do expect performances we can be proud of; and not to finish last. A big ask, some may say, but we are owed a big result. And the manager needs to stop, just STOP being such an unpleasant man to the press. Talking to the fans via the media is a big part of your job and if you hate it that much, no one today would cry if you left. We owe you nothing and you owe us massive for 2017’s absolute clusterfuck. Grow up Martin and cop on.
A Yard of Grass 