Good Intentions Never Good Enough

I may have missed the warning signs, but history will tell us what will happen next.

The story goes. The manager, who has achieved great things with Irish football in some shape or form, is now the target of murmurs, discontent, or severe dissatisfaction. The last five managers of the Irish National team Trappatoni, Staunton, Kerr, McCarthy and even Jack Charlton didn’t leave the job the way they wanted too.

I guarantee you the same fate will befall Martin O’Neill.


I essentially turned into a harsh critic of O’Neill overnight. And that night was last November. In the days and weeks after that game, I struggled to understand how on earth we conspired to throw our chance away. All the hopes and dreams I struggled to manage in the build-up suddenly evaporated into thin air. I couldn’t quite find the anger inside me to replace it. Could you begrudge Denmark for taking their chances? I certainly wasn’t one to turn on our own players, I’m sure they weren’t exactly thrilled at being overrun by the Danish either. Yet, I stood in the South Stand watching this game unfold, a farcry in contrast to the first leg. I had left Copenhagen Sunday morning, without great concern or fear of the Denmark squad. Yes, there was Christian Eriksen. No better than what we faced in the past, be it Bale, Pjanic, Kroos etc. He did nothing of note in the first leg. What was to suggest he’d do much better?

Only if we allow him to yeah but…


In the build-up, my nerves were shot. I was on edge. There’s a way to gauge my excitement. Start playing the opening chords of Put Em Under Pressure. If I’m jumping up and down with a smile on my face, belting out the lyrics, I’m happy. I may not be confident but byjesus I have faith and optimism that a pastor in the Deep South would marvel at. An alternative would find me using the same song as a Battlecry, a tool to manifest my emotions into a cathartic release. I was leaning more towards the latter the day of the 2^nd leg. I was still off work as a result of my broken ankle. I was walking again, but not without pain. This pain however was secondary to occasion at hand and later on, several pints. I was hoping for a great occasion. I believed we could qualify. However, I was apprehensive of my dreams falling apart too.


The belief surging within me stemmed from several facts. We had home advantage, we had playoff experience, and of course, we had heart & desire. We had the perfect scenario unfolding before us. As mentioned already, I saw nothing we couldn’t handle from the first leg. All it could take would be one goal. And then we got that goal, we got the perfect start. Shane Duffy, now our most dangerous attacking threat had capitalised upon a rare Danish mistake and put us 1 up after only five minutes. OK, scoring early has rarely suited us but we were a team that knew how to defend, defend for our lives if we must. As much as there has been luck along the way, we did have some semblance of a defensive structure. Remember, in the 11 previous competitive games at the Aviva Stadium, Ireland had only conceded a total of FOUR goals (Poland, Scotland in 2015 – Austria, Serbia in 2017).


What proceeded to happen was a complete and utter disaster. Denmark proceeded to score FIVE goals, one more than we ever had under O’Neill competitively in Dublin. And what kills me to say it even now, all five were avoidable. Feel free to watch them back if you must. Now, I do not begrudge the fact Denmark won, and won so well. The manner they effectively shut us out and exploited us after going behind is something no man Irish man can argue against. And in dissecting the mistakes on our end that caused our downfall, the best team went to Russia this summer. However, Martin O’Neill presided over the worst Irish football team performance in a generation. This is coming from someone who watched Germany hammer us 6-1 in 2012. We weren’t outclassed to the same extent as we were that evening. And if you want to be generous, Germany went to win the World Cup two years later!


Individual mistakes can happen. Cyrus Christie should really have cleared the ball off the line but was too flat footed to react quickly enough. Stephen Ward, for a player who was almost unrecognisable from the aberration he was back in 2012, was far too ambitious trying to take on Youssuf Poulsen. It was punished emphatically, and set the tone for the evening. That being said, it remained 2-1 at half-time. Before we conceded, James McClean had a great chance to make it 2-0 in our favour. I’m not going to be presumptuous and say his miss was the turning point. The turning point came when O’Neill, in sheer desperation, took off both his central midfielders Harry Arter and David Meyler (captain on the evening) in favour of Wes Hoolahan and Aiden McGeady. The move backfired spectacularly, with Christian Eriksen effectively given the freedom of Dublin City to crush our World Cup dreams.


When apportioning the blame in the fallout of defeat, you have to be fair. For example, as much as Paul McShane had his critics, you couldn’t possibly legislate for freak events such as Thierry Henrys handball going unnoticed. Roy Keane at the time thought otherwise. You  can be held accountable however, for taking off your two central midfielders and playing a 4-1-5 formation that played right into Denmark’s hands. It wasn’t their superior quality that qualified them. Eriksen did not have to play out of his skin at all. In the past, I and many others defended poor performances on the basis that the results justified the means and that it is a results business. If I was using that same logic, then maybe I would look at things differently. Yes, the result was horrific. At the same time, O’Neill led us to the playoffs as a fourth seed. That was nothing to be scoffed at. It did little to comfort me however, and the defeat opened my eyes to the bigger picture. While we did reach the playoffs, we had also squandered several chances to finish first in the group. And much like the playoff 2^nd leg, it was our tactical genius that stifled our courage to finish the job.


That night last November marked the end of the road for that team and management. There were too many players on the wrong side of 30, with the management continuing with same prehistoric tactics. The situation called for a fresh start. The influx of a new generation of younger players, and a manager who could guide and mould them into an effective team was far more appealing than any future O’Neill and Keane could promise us. Further to the point, O’Neill actually hadn’t signed a contract extension. There had been a verbal agreement with the FAI that he stayed on prior to our final two group qualifiers in October 2017. The decision to award a renewal prior to the home match against Moldova and away trip to Wales but seemed vindicated after we won 1-0 in Cardiff. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. His current contract, agreed before Euro 2016, was only signed after the World Cup qualifier with Serbia later that year.


It was typical from the FAI to do this. However, given our crushing defeat in the play-off, the organisation now had the perfect excuse to do away with any extension and move on. Breaking a verbal agreement is hardly best practice. However, there should be no room for sentiment in football. The result warranted serious questions, that some people were already asking. The same tired answers that O’Neill would give, the ones along the lines that the opposition are simply superior and we should be content with where we are etc. don’t cut it. That’s fine if you’re losing to Europe’s elite but he demonstrated tactical suicide in a tie that was far from beyond saving. Supporters, like myself, no longer had faith in his ability to do a good job. Public opinion would never reach the dizzy heights of post Euro 2016 again under his tenure. In the interests of Irish football, we had to wipe the slate clean and look to the future with some sort of positivity again. The football we were trying to play wasn’t good enough, and it certainly wasn’t going to get any better.

Of course the FAI did nothing. Nothing needed to be done in their eyes. O’Neill was still their man and there was no rush to sign a contract. And truth be told, they probably wouldn’t have done anything until this summer had it not been for Stoke City. Stoke decided to sack Mark Hughes at the beginning of the ear and began to look around for a solution, at least in the short term, that could save them from relegation. Martin O’Neill was the preferred choice of chairman Peter Coates, and on the 10^th January that Stoke made contact with O’Neill about the job. News, which to me, was absolutely fantastic! Stoke were to be harbringers of a new dawn for Irish football, something our own organisation lacked the balls to carry out themselves. And it was another indication that O’Neill wasn’t the right man for Ireland. He had always been linked to Premier League jobs during his tenure, he even spoke to Everton in the days after the Denmark defeat. Furthermore, there was a clause in his contract (the previously signed one) that he was allowed to speak to clubs who express an interest in him as long as he makes them (the FAI) aware of the situation. It seemed like the Stoke were intent on hiring O’Neill If they didn’t, we still had a manager with one eye looking elsewhere if the chance presented itself. We were facing into a period of transition going into the next campaign and to have someone at the helm who wasn’t fully committed further endeared me to the idea of his departure.


As it happened, Stoke were only willing to offer a short term deal, something O’Neill didn’t like. As a result, they opted for Paul Lambert as their manager. And O’Neill indicated to the FAI he would like to continue as Ireland manager. He suddenly decided to make an appearance Soccer Writers' Association of Ireland (SWAI) banquet after he held talks with the club. And refused to answer questions. It was a shambles of a situation and the fun didn’t atop when the FAI posted a video on their Twitter account. The quality mirrored the standard of football we were used to seeing from the national team. It was a 76-second interview between O'Neill and a member of the FAI's media team. The caption read, "Republic of Ireland Manager Martin O'Neill gives an update on his contract and looks ahead to 2018. However, O’Neill believed otherwise,  stating that the upcoming friendlies against Turkey and France would be a good opportunity to introduce some younger players into the international set-up. According to the clown asking the questions, it was an “exciting year ahead”, with “exciting times”.


There was nothing to look forward to in 2018. The Nations League is complete load of bullshit. These games are no more competitive than Rugby Matches are Test Internationals. If winning all the games doesn't qualify you, and losing all the games doesn't 100% rule you out of the playoffs, how can they be described as competitive? They might mean something, but theres no worries if you make a balls of it. And then there was the group we were drawn in. An Irish fan looks for a mix of two possibilities. Countries we can beat and countries we’d like to visit. Imagine our delight when Ireland were paired with fucking Wales and fucking Denmark. A mere 12 months after we played them, were back playing them again. Journalists desperate for some sort of angle pushed the revenge aspect of playing Denmark again. No Danish fan would lose as much sleep I did if we managed to beat them this October. I think it would be as painful if we did. An example of what might have been. Wales, under the new management of Ryan Giggs could do one of two things, have Bale lead them to glory or fail spectacularly like we did. Neither were games I looked forward to with anything other than disgust.

Fast forward to March and our friendly against Turkey. There were a grand total of 8 uncapped players in the squad. 2 of which were goalkeepers. The third, Colin Doyle, was winning his fourth cap at the age of 33. And he would play the entire game. No disrespect to Doyle, a consummate professional, but there was nothing tangible to be gained by playing a veteran goalkeeper for 90 minutes in a friendly. Especially considering the fact he was fourth choice keeper a few months earlier. The game itself, and the chance to blood in new players and dare I say it, a new philosophy produced nothing but the same. The tactics on show, if any, were still devoid of imagination or ambition. The players were injected with a sense of panic in possession. Turkey ran out comfortable winners by a scoreline of 1-0. To say the game was without any positive would be wrong however. Declan Rice confirmed to a nation what many were already saying. He was certainly one for the future. He was the one player who despite Irelands approach, rose above it with his composure and presence on the field. A 19 year old prospect who gave a lot of Ireland fans some reason to be positive for the future.


There were further friendlies against France and USA, where Rice featured in both. He was also captaining the U-21’s in their qualifying campaign. He led the celebrations of 96^th minute winner against Azerbaijan, where he kissed the badge in delight. He was born in England but his father was adamant he played for Ireland growing up. Unlike a certain Jack Grealish, Rice had now made 3 appearances for the Senior team and although they were uncompetitive, there was no doubt in anyones mind he would be the focal point of our rebuilding efforts come September in the Nations League. That was until, late August, when the news broke he was declining to join up with the Ireland squad for those games and questioning his International future. It became clear that Gareth Southgate had made an enquiry about Rice switching his allegiances to England. He needed time to think. His agent, in the middle of negotiating his clients contract for West Ham was pushing for the switch to England. Something that imbecile of an owner David Gold was pleading for as well. Naturally the fallout was delirious amongst Irish fans. The one prospect we had for the future was suddenly on the verge of leaving us. To me, there isn’t a question of what to do. After playing three games, and even stating before your deubt “there was no decision to make”, Rices sudden desire to question his future stunned me. And I asked a different question. What exactly has transpired in his three appearances and involvement in training camps might motivate him to jump ship?


Days before the Rice story broke, there was another alarming yarn from the Irish set-up. Ireland manager Martin O'Neill admitted that Jon Walters and Harry Arter were involved in an altercation with assistant manager Roy Keane the last time the squad met up. The story goes that Arter and Jonathan Walters were told they should not train by the Ireland medical staff and Roy then took exception to them missing a training session and ripped into the two players in pretty angry fashion. Whats fucking new I can hear you ask (whether you’re asking that or not). Allegedly, Rice played the peacemaker in the row. That bit I wouldn’t be to inclined to believe but again, the whole thing is a fucking shambles. Why is Keane questioning his own staff? And attacking his own players to the extent one of them is questioning his own future in the squad. Arter hasn’t set the world alight so far in his international career yet Ireland are in no position to cast aside a midfielder playing in the Premier League. Gone are the days we could name a starting eleven from that League by itself. Long gone.


With Rice questioning his future, players refusing call ups and others fighting, it really makes you wonder how toxic the atmosphere is in training. We all heard stories about how the training approach before Euro 2012 contributed to our lethargic ineffective performances in that competition. The hangover from that tournament lasted a full year before we failed to qualify for the World Cup in the next campaign. Fast forward six years later and we are enduring another self-inflicted hangover. We have a manager who has demonstrated little beyond his famous motivational skills to be astute at this level. His Assistant Manager is content enough to cause rows with the squad, and not feel the need to apologise afterwards. And our best talent in a generation is considering switching to England. That's something which was truly unimaginable 6 months to go to himself, O'Neill and many others. Rice isn’t the only prospect we have. There is raw talent we can nurture if we are brave enough to gamble on them. At the same time, I harbour no hope or ambition for them as long as O’Neill is the one guiding them.


I had no intention of travelling to Cardiff this evening. There’s good reason for that as I await the imminent arrival of my first child. A lot of my friends are over there now and for the first time ever I don’t begrudge them. No jealousy or regret for missing out on an away trip. The way I see it, there is no future worth embracing as long as Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane are involved with the Irish team. I’d much rather we sacrifice this campaign and build a new team for the next World Cup campaign. The longer they are in charge, the greater chance there is of sacrificing it for the wrong reasons.

The fact Denmark were willing to send 2^nd Division Futsal players to play Wales on Sunday is the only endorsement of the Nations League you’ll need to hear.