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Football: Why Charlton's men are the guardians of Irish identity: As Ireland's squad for the World Cup finals is named, Eamon Dunphy believes that the questioning of their pedigree at home and abroad is unreasonable and pays insufficient regard to their real ability
THE TONE was, as ever, faintly patronising. The speaker, an English television commentator, was expressing a view shared by most of his compatriots, certainly those employed as sportswriters. Jack Charlton's Irish team were 'gallant'. The expert, engaged to sit alongside the commentator, one of those louche gents who feature regularly on the back pages of tabloid newspapers, a Football League manager, chipped in 'Yes, they've done well the Irish, some of them were actually born over there.' A wry chuckle, before expert and commentator returned to the banal business in hand, an attempt to infuse some drama into yet another nondescript FA Premiership occasion.
We should be accustomed to an Englishman's failure to appreciate the achievement of the Irish under Charlton, who yesterday announced the squad (see right) for next month's World Cup finals in the United States. Two convictions underpin this condescending attitude. Both are understandable, both are wrong. The notion that the Irish are gallant has to do with our size. If a small nation succeeds on the world's playing fields, the tabloid mind can only advance one explanation for success: gallantry. This is a David and Goliath job, hats off to David.
The possibility that Ireland's successes, while reflecting an inordinate amount of gallantry, might also be attributable to more celebrated qualities, such as talent and tactical resourcefulness, seems beyond the grasp of those watching from afar. To be fair to those English critics who cling affectionately to the gallant theory to explain Ireland's presence among the elite of international soccer, one should acknowledge that it was for guts more than anything else that Jack Charlton's team was distinguished when first emerging during the 1988 European Championship.
Courage and a certain stubbornness, bloody conviction, injected by an English manager creating a team in his own image, was indeed the hallmark of the Irish team in Germany. And, two years on, when Ireland reached the quarter finals of Italia '90, the story was much the same.
But now, four years later, the Irish team are immeasurably more formidable for the presence of a group of outstanding footballers, men of unquestioned ability worthy of a place in any international side in Europe. Gifted players such as Denis Irwin, Terry Phelan, Gary Kelly, Roy Keane, Phil Babb and Niall Quinn (sadly injured for next month's finals) have come of age in the world game these past four years. Alongside trusted veterans, Paul McGrath, Kevin Moran, Andy Townsend, John Aldridge, Ray Houghton and Ronnie Whelan, the new generation of Irish players matured while ensuring that Charlton's team survived the most competitive of World Cup qualifying groups. A task which, significantly, proved beyond Denmark, the reigning European champions.
This new Irish team are one of the best in Europe and may prove next month to be even better than that. Gallant Irish? Of course, but talented as well on the latest available evidence, the annihilation of Holland in Tilburg last month, sophisticated and bearing a newly discovered self-confidence in their ability to outwit the opposition rather than grind them into submission.
The fighting Irish are now the thinking Irish, a team worthy of respect. Condescension is no longer appropriate.
That issue having been resolved, the more serious and insidious insult hurled at this remarkable team, that they are not really Irish at all, deserves nothing more than contempt. On the question of breeding, whether or not the sons and grandsons of the Irish diaspora can validly claim to be Irishmen at all, it is not merely English observers who should be confronted with the facts, but others nearer home who sneer at the admittedly incongruous sound of an English voice in an Irish shirt.
During the fraught final qualifying match in Belfast, an unprecedented test of sporting character which Charlton's players passed with honours, sectarian fanatics masquerading as Northern Irish fans vented their hatred for the world to see. The charge levelled at the 'Fenian *******s' was that they were 'mercenaries', selling their souls for an opportunity to play international football. The blackguards of Belfast could be dismissed if it were not for the ironic fact that in their desperation they were echoing the sentiments of their mortal enemies, the Gaelic fanatics, those Irishmen south of the border who, occasionally out loud but mostly by soft, sly deprecation, question the legitimacy of men in Charlton's squad whose accents do not sound quite right to the native ear.
On the issue of Irish identity, English ignorance, coated as it is in affection, can be excused. Pity is perhaps the best response to the Loyalist louts who disgraced themselves at Windsor Park last November. It is, however, less easy to forgive our indigenous bigot, the self-anointed true Gael in this Republic who queries the Irishness of our exiles' children.
Those who have maliciously and persistently muttered about Irishmen with strange accents will doubtless surface again in the weeks ahead. There is one in every town and village, in every bar. Wherever a majority gather to celebrate the substantial achievements of this Irish team, a minority, vocal and often unduly influential, the Irish teacher, the really Catholic priest, the True Gael politician, will lurk, nursing a grudge about 'foreign games' and 'mercenaries'.