Smart-boy-wanted lobby well off target
Tom Humphries
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/spo...12TOMLOCK.html
LockerRoom: The last calamity hadn't been so far in the past that we'd been able to forget what a profoundly deflating feeling a home defeat in Lansdowne Road is.
The experience strips you bare of all pretension. The place empties and all the hopeful green tat gets left behind on the stands. It's all you have left. Somebody has just come into your house and taken from you everything except that handwoven little motto above the mantelpiece. "Draw Away, Win At Home." Ha! Ha! So where does last Wednesday night leave us? Sucking up the reality, I think. Sifting through the debris.
Does it leave us putting a Smart Boy Wanted ad in the window of the FAI? The aftermath of home defeat has traditionally featured a bell tolling ominously for the Irish manager. There's no doubt when Brian Kerr looks back on that big happy press conference which greeted his accession to the job and to his first coup, the restoration of Roy Keane, he must reflect that the bitter ironies are gathering over him like vultures.
The media which chaired him shoulder-high into the job are surprised and disillusioned at how relationships became so bad, so quickly. It doesn't really matter where you stand on the media's involvement in the entire Robbie Keane Karaoke Extravaganza (or the Herald's Saipan II stirring) - the point is that relationships were bad for a long time before that.
Now Kerr ends up travelling to Cyprus with his players not speaking to the media and without Roy Keane, who could list his last appearance in Cyprus as among the five most influential games he played for Ireland. He dragged us out of the mire that night.
The auguries are poor just now. Firstly, players are mistaken if they think not speaking to the media makes things better. They might as well refuse to use microphones when speaking to a large crowd. When players give interviews or press conferences they don't actually speak to the media; they speak to the public who employ them and whom they are paid to represent. They create the environment that establishes profile and brings in sponsorships and all those other nice things.
Leaving a vacuum is silly. It is the nature of editors to abhor a vacuum. The space unfilled by even sulky press conferences and circumscribed interviews gets filled by analysis pieces and critiques. Without the need to maintain the lifeline of access the pieces get more and more robust. (Instead of following the disastrous English model of media relations the FAI should send a working party to the World Cup next year to study how other nations handle things.)
Secondly, the fact Roy Keane, Andy Reid and Clinton Morrison won't be departing for Cyprus leaves us is in a slightly perilous position. The Cypriots don't pretend to be world beaters but they do need beating and against Switzerland last week they put up stout resistance.
So if all goes pear-shaped does Kerr walk the plank? Does his backside get lowered into the bacon slicer? Does he have to do whatever it was Mick McCarthy feared doing in Burton's window? It hardly seems fair.
Where, for instance, is the new David O'Leary? When Big Dave was left out by Big Jack all those years ago he conspicuously wore his big crown of thorns around the place and in pub conversation was offered as the big panacea for the ills of Irish football.
There's no figure of equal weight to whom we can now turn. You look at some of those who didn't see action for the French (Anelka, Mexes, Pedretti, Zebina) last week and you envy the French the room they have for debate and mending and alteration and you wonder which names can be conjured up with which to batter Brian Kerr? I think you could make a case for Aiden McGeady being in the panel regularly in place of one or two journeymen travellers who appear to have their feet under the table, but beyond that? Mark Kennedy? Ronnie O'Brien? Paul Butler? There are no viable alternatives.
You might have a preference for Finnan over Carr, maybe you like Holland better than Kilbane, but basically what is in the panel is what we have. That panel has four players who are regulars for genuine top teams in the Premiership.
And then there's the Premiership culture.
Last week in this paper John McCloskey, the Armagh conditioning trainer, a man who studies these things, made the point that with the exception of a couple of clubs in the Premiership, soccer on these islands is in the dark ages when it comes to player preparation.
It's interesting to think that in the early hours of last Saturday morning, just as the paper containing that interview was coming off the presses, Robbie Keane was coming out of Lillies Bordello, where, not surprisingly, he was photographed.
I'm no conditioning expert but it's hard to imagine a self-respecting GAA club player being out till four in the morning so close to a match of any significance. I'm open on these things but on Wednesday it seemed to me Robbie singularly failed to make the case for the clubbing-and-karaoke approach to top-level football. For a fella who hasn't been getting much pitch time at Spurs every wink of sleep and ounce of sharpness might have been more helpful.
I know how Brian Kerr felt about the media end of things with Robbie but not what he felt deep down about the karaoke and clubbing itself. If I were him I would feel I had been taken advantage of.
With Roy Keane in Saipan a simmering dislike between player and manager erupted volcanically. Some of us would argue that there was a way back but neither man was emotionally inclined that way. So a player who was undroppable stayed at home.
Brian Kerr and Robbie Keane go back a long way, however. Robbie is the nation's top scorer and the best we have in striking options. Out of footballing need and out of friendship he was undroppable.
Still it seems harsh to me to talk about replacing Brian Kerr. The team's performance against France wasn't bad. It was honest and if we lacked the hustle of old at least there was some passion about, much of it emanating from Roy Keane. Generally all that was separating the teams was the French ability to produce a little piece of blinding genius or, if you like, the width of the post when Andy Reid took that free.
If Domenech dismissed us afterwards as predictable we shouldn't be too offended. They knew enough to take care of Duff. After that they didn't allow us much time on the ball. Duff didn't get the runs. Kilbane got no land to go swashbuckling in. Andy Reid was let meander to a certain point. When things got bad we had no options. To say we had no Plan B would be cruel because Brian Kerr is too smart a man to leave the house in the morning without plans A through to Z. We just don't have the players with which to execute those plans. We don't have the personnel for Plan B, let alone Plan C. My preference would have been to move Duff inside and take off Robbie Keane, getting Reid to switch wings and introducing Finnan. I've no great faith in that plan but neither was I on the edge of my seat with excitement when I saw Ian Harte and Gary Doherty coming in.
Last week was disappointing but the four points lost to Israel will be more critical when they do the final audit on Group Four. So, what does Brian Kerr deserve if we fail to get to Germany? Well, on the way home from an early away defeat in Romania, Mick McCarthy had a blazered arm put around him and a new contract thrust in front of him. He was given the chance to learn on the job, and by being given the FAI's imprimatur, he had any sense of isolation or weakness removed.
Brian Kerr has less to work with, a less-mature, less-talented squad (in Romania that night in 1997 we had Roy Keane, Steve Staunton, Ray Houghton, Kenny Cunningham, Denis Irwin and Andy Townsend on the pitch. We still finished 10 points off the Romanians in a group filled out by minnows).
There were mistakes made back then and a gallows built for McCarthy. There have been mistakes made this time around. When you work with high stakes and slender resources you live with mistakes and the knowledge you'll be second guessed. But Kerr dangling without a contract undermines him and attracts vultures.
Jack Charlton got lucky first time out (Ah, sweet Gary Mackay!). Every other manager has been given the space to learn and been judged in the context of what's available. Brian Kerr is owed that much at least.
© The Irish Times
