Cup of Sorrows?

Hope you’re all in fine spirits by the time you read this: rabidly drunk, studying maps of South Africa and checking out hotel locations, replaying endless viewings of the 119th-minute Robbie Keane bicycle kick which secured the greatest win in our nation’s history, and allowing yourselves the luxury of poring over the list of teams who’ve made the cut before settling on England, New Zealand and North Korea as ideal first-round opponents.

In the ridiculously unlikely event that we’ve actually made it, I suggest you pause to reflect for a moment on just how preposterously outlandish such an achievement would have seemed after the first leg — which is where you find me, disconsolate and dejected, cranking out this column on a rainy grey Monday morning, pondering whether I can bear to wait until 2014 for another real World Cup, with Tom Waits’ “I got 35 summers left” speech from Rumble Fish echoing through my head.
Assuming as I must that we’ve fallen narrowly short — I suspect that by the time you read this, we’ll have thoroughly outplayed a complacent France and shaved the woodwork once or twice in the course of a heroic 0-0 draw — the question turns to whether our nation’s footballing fate is in the right hands, as Signor Trapattoni prepares to steer the good ship through a Euro 2012 campaign whose Finals will take place a few months after his 73rd birthday.
At this stage — and I realise events in Paris may have rendered these observations redundant — I’m inclined to think that the good has outweighed the bad since Trap assumed charge, and that nagging concerns over the team’s frustrating tactical conservatism, lack of attacking fluency and the utterly senseless omission of Andy Reid are outweighed by the manager’s accomplishment in restoring shape, purpose, cohesion and spirit to an outfit which was a shapeless mess when he took over. In this respect, the heated Saturday night spat between Messrs. Dunphy and Souness on RTÉ’s podcast was quite illuminating in several respects.
Souey assumed the role of dispassionate external observer, gently pointing out that we basically don’t have the players to seriously cause the likes of France undue sleep loss, that securing a spot in the play-offs was something of an achievement in itself, and that, to quote his fellow Edinburgh man Irvine Welsh, you can only piss with the cock you’ve got. Dunphy was having none of it, more or less stating that John O’Shea, Richard Dunne, Robbie Keane, Shay Given and Damien Duff are absolute world-beaters who would undoubtedly walk into the Brazil line-up if they were Brazilians, and that any manager who fails to win the World Cup every four years with a squad of Ireland’s immense talent simply isn’t doing his job properly.
The inference is that Trapattoni is wilfully taking the team down the tubes, neglecting a historic opportunity, hindering the finest pool of players on the planet from fulfilling the nation’s birthright, just like Steve Staunton, Brian Kerr, Mick McCarthy, Jack Charlton and Eoin Hand before him. (Dunphy’s observations grow more and more ridiculous with every passing year, although he expresses them quite poetically and you could listen to him all night. But his habit of asking fellow panelists for their opinion and then proceeding to shout them down before they’ve said their piece is incredibly annoying and very rude for a grown man, and one hopes RTÉ pull him up on it)
Though Dunphy’s populist bluster is usually best taken with a generous pinch of salt, it is increasingly impossible to refute his contention that Andy Reid’s continued exile is by this stage downright scandalous, a point never more vividly illustrated than on Saturday night when the black hole that is Ireland’s central midfield became a gaping chasm as the second half wore on. To settle on Glenn Whelan and Keith Andrews as a no-frills central midfield partnership is arguably fair enough, but to leave the squad completely bereft of any replacements in that position is simply inviting trouble. Fretting over the self-inflicted absence of the accursed Stephen Ireland is a complete waste of time, but Andy Reid could certainly have made a significant difference on Saturday night, and the clamour for his recall simply can’t be loud enough. A national petition might help, or better still, a referendum on inserting an article into the Constitution which makes it mandatory for the manager to select him.
If we must settle on a scapegoat for the team’s latest failure, we could do worse than point the finger at Pope Benedict XVI, who apparently sent the Irish team a good-luck message prior to the first leg, and fuck-all good it seemed to do.
No good can come of Papal interference in the nation’s footballing affairs. Those of you old and decrepit enough to remember the summer of 1990 may recall that Ireland were blazing an unbeaten trail through the World Cup until they went to visit the pontiff in Rome, and promptly lost the next game 1-0 to Italy, in the process getting knocked out.
(A memorable conversation with my esteemed predecessor Tony Cascarino left me with the distinct impression that the Holy Father’s questionable personal hygiene may have played no small part in our downfall. But what’s done is done.)
At least we’ve still got rugby, and it’s no exaggeration to state that winning that particular World Cup within my lifetime is an entirely realistic aspiration. At the time of writing, I’ve just witnessed the 20-20 draw with Australia in a hectic workplace environment without having the opportunity to pore over the minute forensics of the performance, which I intend to do when I get home tonight, assuming I haven’t been snapped up by a flock of zillionaire supermodels in the meantime. I have, however, watched the immeasurably excellent DVD boxed-set Grand Slam Glory a couple of billion times, and can state quite confidently that we are eminently capable of beating any team in the world, as the Springboks will discover in two weeks’ time.
With the next World Cup a mere two years away, and the global rugby landscape currently lacking a single dominant power, the road is clear. The Kiwis are in decline, Australia haven’t been a truly formidable force at any time in the last ten years, England are a black joke, the French have seen better days, and Wales are usually well within our power.
The truth is that South Africa and Ireland are, on all known recent form, the two finest international teams in the world at this point in time, and their imminent collision at Croker should be something to savour. I hope you all make the effort to attend and give Schalk Burger the welcome he deserves for ramming his fingers into Luke Fitzgerald’s eyeballs on the comfort of his home turf during the second Lions Test. After the match, Burger pointedly declined to apologise, while the Springbok manager, Pieter de Villiers, observed of the gouging incident: ‘It’s sport, man. That is what it’s all about.’
I don’t think any further motivation is needed. Give ‘em hell, lads.