Conor Bates | Sports Editor
If another person tells me that Trapattoni should have used Wes Hoolahan more, I think I will scream. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the sentiment; Hoolahan is better than some of the midfield options that Trapattoni deployed in his final outings as Ireland manager. The collective Irish football diaspora shudders at the thought of seeing Paul Green’s name on the team-sheet, and rightly they should. The gaffer’s demise started with Euro 2012 and picked up speed from there. Once Trap made the decision to take the unattached Green with him to Poland, the alarm bells started to ring for most of us.
Trapattoni said he was going with the players that had got him to the finals, and not returning to any of the, potentially better, players who had jumped ship, or who had not contributed enough to the cause. This is admirable enough. It is a just reward for the athletes who had gotten us to our first major competition in ten years. But Paul Green. Really? He hadn’t played any contributing factor to the journey, and was thusly rewarded. Trap’s erratic team selections were becoming worrying and fallings out with players were always public and problematic. We went to Euro 2012 without Andy Reid, Dean Kiely or any of the many players who found themselves in Trap’s growing book of outcasts and lost-boys, and we were well beaten.
Twelve months down the line and the Italian walked away, leaving Noel King to shepherd the side through the last two games of an unsuccessful World Cup Campaign. The talk of late has all been about new manager options, and who would be willing to take on the mantle of stewarding the Boys in Green. The comment in the last few days of Trap’s reign, however, was concerned with his player selection, his plans, his tactics and his stubbornness. The rants of Giles, Dunphy and the irrepressible ‘Chippy’ Brady ring clearly in my ears. At one point or another, they all dug the knife into Trap. I was as happy as anyone to see him go, but perhaps not with the same venom; I appreciated what he did for us, but his reluctance to change meant it was time for change. I thanked him, I wished him well despite disagreeing with him at times, but unlike many others, I did not blame him, for one simple reason. In all reality, he did not have the players.
Trapattoni came under a lot of scrutiny as his reign ended
Look back at the history of our world ranking and the insights you can extrapolate are fairly self-evident. Ireland were at their best in the early 90’s. Our ranking at this time hovered around the low teens, with an all-time best world ranking of 6th pulling the average for our glory days to a respectable 11th overall. We may play in a tough confederation, and our recent fortunes have seen us rightly slump, but you can’t really argue with where we currently stand. 60th in the world is representative of the squad we work with. The reason we were so effective back when summers were sunny and 99’s cost 99p, was because our players were better. Too obvious?
Trap’s stubbornness on player selection and retention cost him his job. More importantly it stopped Ireland from flourishing. As I stated earlier on, there are most definitely better footballers out there. What the globetrotting Italian failed to do, was look for them. Like say, Irish manager of the 1990’s, Jack Charlton. It’s not going too far to say that the reason Ireland used to be so good, was that a higher proportion of the players weren’t Irish natives, and many of our top athletes had come through the systems of better equipped footballing nations.
When we were at our best we had at our disposal some of the better names in the business, none of whom came from Ireland. Townsend, McAteer, Babb, Houghton, Hughton and Aldridge all contributed to some of the glory days of Irish football. Throw in Alan and David Kelly, O’Leary, Phelan, Cascarino and former manager Mick McCarthy, and you’ll soon see that Ireland’s 1990 and 1994 World Cup Squads were a minimum 40% English. Cynical? Perhaps. Effective? Definitely. Like it or not, these are some of the best players Ireland has ever had, and it’s a trend that can be traced right back to Tony Grealish and Mark Lawrenson; we’ve always benefited from the Irish grandparent rule.
We need a good manager, true enough. We need a breath of fresh air in the camp, and someone who can raise our game to a higher plateau. But most importantly, we need better players. We long for more McCleans and McCarthys to pull on the green shirt. We’ve had good success with Sean St. Ledger and Jon Walters, and Anthony Pilkington is certainly one for the future. What we need is a manager who will go to games, unearth a few birth certs and get quality young players, who want to play for Ireland, and who can help raise our game. Mark Bunn, Mark Noble, Kyle Naughton, even Anton Ferdinand are all available and eligible to play for Ireland. It’s certainly a jump in calibre from Paul Green.
Noel King made good strides in recalling a few players in from the wild. The next manager will have to go even further. I must point out that, all the while, I would love to see the development of Irish football and homegrown players, but until we reach the echelon of the available, non-Irish stars, we need to be more ruthless with our catchment. Football is a results based game. To get those results, no Irish need apply.
