Captain Keane celebrates after leveling terms with Kazakhstan
Fionn O’Dea
Deputy News Editor
“Unless we score two goals in the next 7 minutes, I’ll be sending you a story tonight on this utter, utter tripe.”
The above is the mail I sent to The University Times Sports Editor at 18:43 last week, as the minutes ticked away with Ireland a goal down to Kazakhstan and facing an effective early elimination from our qualifying group. And while it could be suggested that the Gods of journalism simply didn’t want me to write anything, here it is anyway.
We were thumped by some of the biggest names in World football this summer, but to come so perilously close to a humbling at the hands of the Kazakh’s is inexcusable. I sometimes wish I didn’t care so much. This team has been a joy to me and yet kept me up at night. At nine, I felt the ecstasy of the World Cup. At 14, I struggled to nod off after seeing the Boys in Green falter over the line against San Marino.
As the minutes whittled away, I felt the need the put my laptop away lest I smash it after seeing the team give away another needless free kick or kick a long, hopeless ball to nothing. I like to see managers given time to turn things around. Despite this, I am quickly running out of patience with Mr Trapattoni. We no longer wonder whether his current manner of doing things is having a detrimental effect on the mood of the team, we know it is. We have Kevin Foley and Darron Gibson not making themselves available. We have Shane Long and James McClean contradicting their own manager’s assertions that they are not fit to play, and we have an assistant manager holding out hope for a return for Damien Duff while one of the Premier League’s brightest wide prospects sits on the bench. Whatever about the win – a fluke at best – the idea that, with five minutes to go Trap didn’t bring McClean on baffles the mind.
Perhaps due to our late escape, I have clarity of mind to pose the following questions to the growing ‘Trap Out’ brigade: how could the FAI, an organisation in deep debt, afford to pay off the remaining two years of the contract of a manager whose employment is only viable due to the input of a Sugar daddy? And who, that would want the Ireland job (hardly a massive pool of managers more qualified than Trap) is available at short notice to take over on the FAI’s budget? If we know anything about Trap, it is that he is a stubborn man, far too stubborn to alter his system, let alone resign. So for better or for worse, we’re stuck with him.
It shouldn’t be like this. For this paper, less than a year ago, I watched the old guard of Duff, Keane and Given, with smiles bigger than I’ve ever seen, parade their team around the pitch, knowing that we were finally going to be competing with the big boys in the summer. The mood was good, the build-up optimistic. Almost everything since has been pathetic. Disregarding a rather pointless and bizarre friendly against Oman, next up for our boys are the Germans. Achtung, Trap. Another performance like that and we’ll have an embarrassment on our hands.
