Green Army's ugly aggression just depressing
Tuesday October 22nd 2002
HIS days are a kind of documentary now as Mick McCarthy closes in on the end game.
The panes of his world have begun to snap and splinter. He may be on holiday in Portugal but, most likely, a fax machine will be busy.
McCarthy has long protested that he doesn't read newspapers and it has always been his least convincing line. Truth is, the media ended up mattering more to this Irish manager than they ever should.
And now, as some try reading him his rights, Mick must feel like a man with a bounty on his head.
He left Lansdowne Road last Wednesday to a symphony of idiocy and toilet-wall language. One chap ran alongside the team coach as it pulled away from beneath the West Stand, wailing obscenities through a plastic megaphone. McCarthy, head bowed, sat at the front alongside his wife, Fiona.
We watched from the top of the lane, a gaggle of journalists and two National League managers, Pat Dolan and Stephen Kenny. As the bus braked before entering the night traffic, megaphone man found himself virtually face-to-face with McCarthy.
"F**k off home you English c**t," he spat, his brain then seizing up, presumably from exhaustion.
"Jeez guys," gasped Dolan. "This can be one mean game."
Even some of McCarthy's most strident critics have expressed dismay at the ****-eyed belligerence he encountered in Wednesday's immediate aftermath. There was an ugliness to Lansdowne that night, a putrefying aggression that had to depress anyone with more between their ears than gurgling sounds.
And it was an ugliness best noted by those now sneaking covetous glances at the Irish job.
Eoin Hand could write a book about the dark underbelly of 'The best supporters in the world'.
Hand's management of the Irish team was conspicuous for a lack of kind fortune. Sure, he had his good days (plenty of them) but it all ended in a shower of spittle and fizzing hatreds after Denmark won a World Cup qualifier 4-1 at Lansdowne Road in 1985.
Hand had been incessantly thrashed by one particularly virulent critic and this was the mob's response. Phlegm.
Others like John Giles and Mick Martin could give citations on the chameleon ways of a certain silt-eyed brethren still managing to contaminate the 'Green Army.'
So, Wednesday was no startling aberration. It was merely a reminder that we, too, are susceptible to caveman acoustics. We, too, have adults among us who consider spitting at someone to be a form of legitimate expression.
The bulk of Irish supporters know the score here. They understand. Some see McCarthy as a good manager, some don't. Some believe all our troubles will cease the moment he abdicates. Others suspect the matter may be more complex than that.
Only the morons resort to bile.
In all probability, McCarthy will not be around to endure their taunts much longer. I can't imagine, given the brewing storm, that those spring-time assignments in Tblisi and Tirana hold much lure now.
I am certain that he regrets not bowing out after the World Cup finals. I don't doubt that, if he could rewind to that restaurant in Saipan again, he would do so.
But the notion that, with McCarthy out of the way, Roy Keane will stroll blissfully back into the Irish dressing room seems hopelessly simplistic. Too much has been said and, more pertinently, written for that to be a simple commute.
No matter what manager takes the reins, Roy still needs to explain himself. Not to you or me. But to the players he has, effectively, derided.
The greatest footballer in the world (and Keane may well be that) won't win a game for you if surrounded by disaffected team-mates.
There is an illuminating passage quite early in Niall Quinn's autobiography that hints at the cursed dynamic between Keane and his Irish team-mates.
It recalls the night before the friendly against Nigeria. Quinn is literally getting into bed when Mick Byrne knocks on his door. The physio tells Quinn that Keane (who has just arrived in the hotel) wants to see him.
"Well, why doesn't he come here then?" asks the big Dubliner. "Just go will ya," answers Byrne.
The newspapers have become a chattering waterfall of innuendo regarding Roy's absence from Niall's testimonial. Some suggest Quinn is fuming with his Irish colleague. So, he dutifully follows Byrne to Roy Keane's room.
Niall takes up the story thus: "He's sitting there, tense and uncomfortable and he says to me 'No hard feelings, I thought Mick (McCarthy) knew'.
"I'm a little bit surprised. I thought this was something about which nothing would ever be said, but Roy is obviously making an effort and I appreciate that. 'Yeah, Mick did know', I say. 'It's not a problem, Roy'.
"I can see he's embarrassed about this whole conversation so we keep it short, very short. 'Cheers' I say and leave him sitting there."
However conciliatory his intent, the image of Keane effectively summoning a senior Irish team-mate to his room is informative. Why not go to Quinn himself? Did he consider knocking on a colleague's door somehow beneath him?
Keane was, as Quinn observed, "making an effort". It may just be that he now needs to make a bigger one.
Vhogan1@hotmail.com
Vincent Hogan - Time out
