Category: Football

YoG No. 20 – Under-rated Irish – Stephen McPhail

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In the 2nd of this series, I look at another fine Irish midfielder.

Stephen McPhail retired at the end of the domestic season after 3 seasons at Shamrock Rovers.  Once dubbed “the new Liam Brady” by George Graham, he was part of a truly great Leeds United squad that reached the Champions League semi-final under David O’Leary and a key member of the Irish U-18s European Championship winning team with Brian Kerr as manager. He also led a Cardiff team out at Wembley for the 2008 FA Cup Final. His career, however, was blighted with injuries and illnesses. Despite his success, despite his great achievements, and despite the fact that he has been appointed Sporting Director with Rovers and will hopefully have a long, and deserved post-playing career in football, there is a sense  that had a bit more luck shone his way, we would be speaking of him in the same vein as his former teenage teammates Robbie Keane and Damien Duff. Even a glorious end at Rovers would have been nice, but managerial upheavals and the presence of great Dundalk and Cork City sides kept the Hoops well off the big honours in McPhail’s time at the club as a player.

Born in Westminster, London, he was raised in Dublin. His schoolboy career was forged in that great Dublin Academy of Home Farm in the early 1990’s from where he earned a spot in Leeds’ youth system. For those of you too young to remember, Leeds were giants of English football in the 90’s and into the early 00’s. Some of you are probably old enough to remember them as giants in the 1970’s as well. The now much-maligned and perennially unemployed David O’Leary was their manager through this golden period as McPhail made 78 appearances for the first team. O’Leary’s sacking, combined with a massive financial implosion and the subsequent scrambling around for new gaffers and new ways to dig themselves out of their abyss,  meant the glory days were well and truly over for the club, and Stephen left to join Barnsley in 2004 after loan spells at Forest and Millwall. From being an unused substitute in a Champions League semi-final against Valencia to the 3rd tier of English football is quite a drop in a few years, but he went on to rebuild back up to the pinnacle of the game not long after.

After playing a part in Barnsley’s promotion to the Championship in 2006, he left to join Cardiff City. He spent 7 years with the Welsh club and racked up 190 appearances, captaining them on many occasions, including the 2008 FA Cup Final. This honour has fallen to only 2 other Irishmen in recent decades – Ronnie Whelan in 1989 and Roy Keane in 1999, 2004 and 2005 (thanks DannyInvincible on foot.ie). It’s quite an exclusive list to feature on. Unfortunately Cardiff were beaten by Portsmouth that day.

Injuries would interrupt the next few years, followed by a cancer of the lymphoma diagnosis in November 2009. He would be out until the following February, which was a remarkable recovery turnaround and a testament to his character. Over the following years, he was in and out of the side with injuries and illness, including Sjogrens syndrome. Despite this he was given the honour of Clubman of the Year in 2012, but was released by Malky Mackay at the end of the 2012/13 season after only 2 appearances that term. After a brief stint at Sheffield Wednesday, he came home to Shamrock Rovers at the start of 2014. He made 53 appearances for the Hoops, scoring twice.

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He has 10 Ireland caps and 1 goal, the last appearance coming in 2004. I don’t understand how he wasn’t capped more often, in particular during his time at Cardiff City. It seems ridiculous that an Irish player can lead a team out at Wembley and not feature for the national team. He was drafted in by Trappatoni in 2008 but never featured. The fact that he was a fine footballer maybe explains that.

I think we can all trust that Stephen will continue to give his all to Shamrock Rovers in his new role and bring home his wealth of experience gained at the highest levels in England. He has had an extremely successful career for which he deserves great credit. And despite the difficulties he’s had to overcome in forging a 20-year playing career, his humility in his statement on his retirement shows he is precisely the type of personality that we need to keep in the Irish game.

His statement ended very simply with the words “Football, thank you for everything”. It’s a sentiment we all understand to some degree, but rarely express. I hope he has many more happy decades in the game.

YoG No. 2 – Under-rated Irish – Tony Galvin

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A full 3 years before the USSR collapsed, the process was begun when Ireland’s Tony Galvin dismantled their magnificent football team in Hanover in a EURO 88 group game. His degree in Russian Studies from Hull University may have helped him play such a key part in this landmark game for Irish football. To this day, it remains probably the greatest Irish performance of all-time, if not the greatest result. The 1-1 outcome may push this game down the pecking order compared to better days and nights for Ireland, but the overall performance has yet to be bettered. Ireland were outstanding, and against a team who were edged out in the previous World Cup in an epic 2nd round match which finished 4-3 after extra-time. They lost out on that occasion to an excellent Belgian side, who were themselves only knocked out by Maradona in the semi-finals. This USSR side also went on to the final of EURO 88 itself.

But in that group game, Ireland were far superior and Tony Galvin was our star. He tormented the Soviet defence, which included Khidiyatullin, Kuznetsov, and Demyanenko, protected by the likes of Aleinikov, Belanov and Vasyl Rats in midfield – a fairly solid bunch. Run after run down the Irish left led to chances for Aldridge and Stapleton. While Ronnie Whelan’s volley/shinned screamer is deservedly the most memorable moment of the game, giving Ireland the lead in the first half, it should not be forgotten that Galvin was completely upended in a one-on-one by Soviet keeper Rinat Dasayev in the second half, with the match still at 1-0. Had Galvin not been poleaxed, he most certainly would have finished it to make it 2. As it happened, the collision ended Dasayev’s participation eventually, after hobbling around for a few minutes as Ireland – with Galvin to the fore – kept up the bombardment.

While Galvin’s performance has gone down in history, let’s not forget that other Irish legend which was created that night. As a Charlton-esque hoof from the back landed at the feet of Oleg Protasov at the edge of the Irish box, the young George Hamilton let out that infamous cry of “danger here”. The ball went through Packie Bonner’s legs and the phrase has been a dreaded part of the Irish soccer commentary folklore ever since.

In 2012 the Irish Independent published “The Legends” magazine listing the top 50 Irish soccer players of all time. Galvin came in at 36 just behind Chris Morris and ahead of Tony Cascarino. And when you consider the exalted cult status of the latter, it jars slightly with the under-rated tag I give Galvin here. Perhaps, but Cascarino’s status has as much to do with his media appearances, eye-opening biography and his exuberant personality, than anything he did on the pitch.

Galvin’s club career is defined mainly by his years at Tottenham Hotspur. Signed by Keith Burkinshaw on the recommendation of Bill Nicholson in 1978 from non-league Goole Town, Galvin is still remembered fondly by Spurs fans as a major part of a very successful side which won 2 FA Cups back-to-back in 1981 and 82 and the UEFA Cup in 1984. En route to the latter, he scored 3 goals over 2 legs against Feyenoord in the second round. That Feyenoord team included Ruud Gullit and Johan Cruyff.

Galvin left White Hart Lane in 1987 to go to Sheffield Wednesday. Hit by injury there he went on to Swindon Town in 1989, and with former Spurs team mate Ossie Ardiles in charge he became assistant manager the following season. He followed Ardiles to Newcastle in the same role until the Argentinian was sacked in 1992.

As I mentioned earlier, Tony Galvin has a degree in Russian Studies and he also studied teaching at Trent Polytechnic. He now teaches at a London College.

It’s not usually fair to distill a great and hugely successful career down to one match, but sometimes a game just stands out and will stand out forever in the hearts and minds of those who saw it – Richard Dunne in Moscow for example – and when I think of Tony Galvin now, it’s the socks down around the ankles almost goading one of the world’s best defences into even attempting to dispossess him that I think of.

And to end, here he is in all his glory, having been absolutely creamed by Dasayev… It was all they could do to stop him that night…

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YoG No. 1 – Welcome to A Yard of Grass

 

This is a brand new football blog from Dublin, Ireland. And it starts with an acknowledgement of the inspiration for the title…

Of course it was Brian Clough who inspired the Sultans of Ping in the first place, with his description of Forest winger John Robertson, but moving on…

I’m a town planner by day, a job, like any other, that gets in the way of watching and reading about football. In these posts, I’m going to try to get across the love of the game that so many of us feel but that rarely gets a look-in in the mainstream media anymore. Football is so damn cynical these days. And when it’s not being cynical it’s overly and insincerely sentimental. Football coverage is generally atrocious. For every Ken Early and Graham Hunter, there’s 50 tabloid hacks sucking the life out of the game. Scandal after scandal is manufactured by these people. Grealish drunk; McClean ravaged for his admirable stance on the poppy; Raheem havin’ the “crack”. All bullshit. All irrelevant to the game. It’s January now and we are being bombarded by outright lies on an hourly basis, known as the transfer window. Stories are created; the hopes of the gullible fans raised and dashed every day; and behind it all Rupert Murdoch is laughing, and an elite band of billionaires with him. Football is a dirty little business.

But we love it. We love it because it’s the single most unpredictable thing in our lives. We love it because a combination of Shane Long’s right foot and Jonathan Walters’ arse can topple the world champions; because Exeter City could and should have beaten Liverpool last week; because Leicester City topped the Premier League at Christmas 12 months after being bottom; because Iceland and Albania will be in France in June, and the Dutch won’t; because every so often, just when you’re getting tired of the whole damn pantomime, something happens that pulls you back in and starts you dreaming again. Liverpool in Istanbul. United in Barcelona in ’99. A scoreboard during a competitive European fixture in White Hart Lane that read – for a glorious short-lived few minutes – Tottenham Hotspur 0 – 1 Shamrock Rovers. Damn that shaky cameraphone but I know what it said.

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But mainly we love it because we still believe we can do what they do – those overpaid lucky bastards. Every mistake made by a player is cursed to high heaven because you know exactly what he should have done and you know you have the ability to do it. Clear the f***ing thing, don’t pass it out of defence! Play it outside, don’t dribble in!! And as a former fairly useful dead-ball expert meself, I know for a fact that I can knock in a better corner than 90% of those taken in the Champions League. And I can’t for the life of me understand a free-kick ballooning way over the bar! Clowns!! All of this despite the fact that I never climbed the football ladder beyond the low reaches of the Dublin District Schoolboy League. And neither, most likely, did you.

We love it because football is everything. It can range from drama to comedy to farce and to tragedy in 90 minutes. In 5 minutes.

So why start writing this? Well it’s probably a combination of things, but mainly ego, if I’m to be honest. I want to share my views and the internet lets me.

But also because 2015 was a year where, despite (or maybe because of) not seeing as much football on TV as perhaps in the past, it once again began to occupy the same part of my brain as it did when I was 12. Football excited me again. I walked out of Lansdowne Road after that German match with the same mix of a permanent smile and tears behind the eyes as I had in 1990 after the Dutch game. It wasn’t a game of football. It was a country arriving at, or returning to, it’s proper place in the footballl world. It was also a country falling back in love with their Boys in Green. For the first time in a long, long time, the Irish soccer team contained bona fide national heroes. For all the hype over the Rugby team going into their World Cup as back-to-back 6 Nations champions, much of it merited, and for all the column inches devoted to GAA and another Dublin All-Ireland victory, and then to Conor McGregor, for a huge number of us 2015 will always be remembered as the year we beat the World Champions in football and qualified for our third European Championships.

I hope over the coming months and years to get that across; to counter some of the pointless nonsense that envelops the beautiful game these days and to focus on the great things about it, the worthwhile over the sensationalist.  And to make you laugh a bit along the way too. It won’t be very regular, but keep an eye out for it…

Thanks for reading

Clemo (3)

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