FAO Red Paddies

[aws]

Can someone post a photo of Delaney's sister so we can properly judge Staunton's behaviour?

[Gav]

Can someone post a photo of Delaney's sister so we can properly judge Staunton's behaviour?

 

Exactly like this except more hairy

 

[aws]

Exactly like this except more hairy

 

 

Sack him.

[Ronnie Whelan]

As an Englishman I have to say Ireland drawing with Cyprus at home is far worse than losing to a Guus Hiddink managed Russia in Moscow.

 

Russia are a decent side with a world class manager. Cyprus are probably made up of mostly guys playing in the Greek second division. Cyprus really good have won by two or three goals.

 

Really think if Ireland had a good manager they could become a very decent team again. Given is world class and Finnan and Dunne are outstanding defenders. Ireland is a class midfielder with bags of potential and Duff is still young enough to be a great player again. Doyle and Keane are on paper a very decent partnership up front. Don't understand why they can't perform together....surely thats down to a coach to be able to sort that out on the training ground. Why is Keane so good for Spurs? The easy thing is to question his attitude for his country. Surely a manager worth his salt can get a talent like him to perform. Making him captain is baffling.

 

Hopefully Israel can defeat Russia and Scotland can beat Italy to qualify. Think Northern Ireland can still mathematically qualify too. How shit would it be to have no team from the British isles in the tournament.

[Gav]

Ohhh my fucking God

 

Houllier apparently

[hamstrung]

He'd probably do well with Ireland.

 

The football won't be much to look at, but Ireland are well used to that anyway.

[Dermot]

Ohhh my fucking God

 

Houllier apparently

 

I am thinking positively and hoping that when he sees how much the job pays then he will walk away.

[johnb]

Not a chance Gav (although you are in the know). He's DTN in France now.

[SamiHyypia]

Why couldn't we just have gotten results from the away games in Latvia and Iceland?! We would be sitting nicely but for them two defeats.

 

Its all in the mind with Norn Iron. If we had got results against Latvia and Iceland we wouldn't have played as freely as we did in Sweden. I think Sweden thought it would be easy against a team demoralised by those 2 defeats so they eased up. If we were still a REAL threat to Sweden and they'd HAD to win it would have been very different.

 

Still i'm delighted with the campaign even if we don't qualify.

 

PS. You KNOW what will happen next..............We'll fcuk up aginst Denmark and go out and beat Spain. And then we'll start a thread about "if only we'd beaten Denmark!" :yes:

[chrisbonnie]

Robbie Keane was just on the Late Late, talk about pathetic, he came across asa whinging upppet of the FAI

 

sayign that press never gave stan a chance, not even from day 1, eh, hang on a second dopey hole, maybe if you`se didnt lose sao many games, and get outplayed by the likes of fucking Cyprus, he wouldnt get so much stick, what a fucking buffoon, im actually takien aback with the shite he`s just spouted

 

irish captain my arse, until now i had no problem with him ,but he should be stripped of the captaincy when/if we get a new manager, gobshite

[Gav]

Not a chance Gav (although you are in the know). He's DTN in France now.

 

 

John

 

He's the preferred choice apparently

Excellent piece by Tom Humphreys too ,confirms everything I've been saying about Billy big balls Keane.Whats pissing me off more than anything else is the fact that Staunton and his drinking pals alienated and scapegoated the younger players .Theres some very interesting stories about to hit the print about Stephen Ireland not playing.Its open season on Staunton now because Delaney is trying to save his own skin so all the stories that were under wraps due to His threats are now free to use.The media have the bitbetween their teeth and Stauntons position is untenable.Announcement due on tuesday evening

 

 

Robbie: don't blame the messenger

Tom Humphries

 

Locker Room : Robbie Keane. Robbie Keane. You crazy, mixed-up kid. What were you thinking jetting across to lecture the confused peasantry on the insidious evils lurking within the media?

 

Lawdee. We can accept that the media's embarrassing failure to qualify the country for next summer's European Championship finals is something you might well take personally, Robbie. Still. That doesn't make you Marshall McLuhan.

 

And we can only imagine how deeply you must resent the fourth estate's tendency in recent years to score goals only against very poor teams. But your deconstruction of the media-celebrity-football matrix lacks clarity, Robbie.

 

Listen. We hacks may be the lowest form of life you can imagine, but we are at least a couple of evolutionary stages beyond being your publicists. If you ever give us a second glance you might notice how few of us actually wear cheerleaders' skirts and tassels while we work.

 

Jimmy Cannon, a crusty old sportswriter who didn't know how to pull a punch, used to say that sportswriting survives because of the guys who don't cheer. Sportswriting just about survives in this country and a lot of the time we do actually cheer. But, Robbie, we have nothing to be cheering about.

 

The cheering thing was a theme Jimmy Cannon felt strongly about.

 

"I don't want sportswriters being fans," he wrote about the baseball beat. "I want them to be the guys who neither love nor hate the sport and whose life is not wrapped up in the sport and who remember they are working newspapermen and not baseball people."

 

We've all done plenty of cheering for you, Robbie. In the good times maybe you mistook us for fans. That's the cheering that got you boot deals and endorsement contracts and made you a very wealthy young man.

 

There's been so much cheering done for you that it's just about possible to understand how you would mistake journalists for publicists and come to resent the sudden withdrawal of fondling and fawning when times go bad.

 

You know well how it worked. You once - amusingly, I thought - refused to attend a press conference because your agent hadn't been given final approval on an Evening Herald article. The article in question made you out to be a cross between Mother Teresa and Pele and was actually a puff piece arranged by your boot sponsors, whose name and logo figured prominently across the two pages.

 

Still, great and fearful was your sulky wrath.

 

You know how these things are. The same agent once responded to an interview request with you by inviting me to fly to England, where he would arrange a five-minute slot with you.

 

I genuinely thought he was joking, Robbie, but he said that, no, you were very busy being a footballer and all that. I could take it or leave it. So I left it.

 

We've done longer interviews since and they have been grand and whatever they provided for the newspaper those interviews gave you a chance to transmit some of your personality to the Irish soccer public; they gave the people who buy the boots and the tickets and the jerseys some idea of what kind of a fellow Robbie Keane is.

 

That is good for everyone when it comes to creating a bond between players and public. That sort of exposure has meant that in good times you are feted and in bad times generally, Robbie, you are forgiven. People feel they know Robbie Keane.

 

It's not so long ago, for instance - just two years, in fact - that in the run-up to a huge game against France your own preparations for that match involved a night of karaoke till the small hours in the local and then a prolonged occupation of Lillies Bordello till the early hours the following night.

 

Good luck to you, but before you lecture us about how we are all in the same boat and all want the same thing you might stop to think about how short-changed the paying punter felt. Same boat? Some of us seem to be rowing harder than some other people in the boat, Robbie.

 

One of the many failures of the regime presided over by your old friend "Stan" has been the whole media-relations thing. Back in the Mansion House when "Stan" was launched by John Delaney (who, we now realise, was doing so only because his wife and children were being held at gunpoint somewhere else) there was much brave talk from "Stan" and his Uncle Bobby about how the media were going to be co-opted into the deal and we'd all be just a part of Stevo's Army.

 

That was kind of off-putting right from the start - being patronised and told how we'd soon be all on the payroll working as shills in the brave new world. But we have seen regimes come and go and we shrugged and got on with it.

 

Of course it took one bad result for the shutters to come down and for the team and management to adopt a policy of speaking only through gritted teeth.

 

It's not really of any interest to the general peasantry how the media are treated by the Irish team, but it should be. The media are merely the instrument through which players communicate with the people who pay their wages and puff their egos.

 

It doesn't really matter if the team find us all to be a lowdown bunch of scurvy curs; the bigger picture is that if you want to communicate with the general public it is much easier to do it through expressing yourself reasonably in interviews than indulging in epic sulks or performing in a string of karaoke nights.

 

That's why when you wanted to get your pouty message across you decided to get your face onto the Late Late Show on Friday night.

 

Ah, Robbie. When you ban the media from setting foot in the team hotel, when your manager gets everybody to drive to Malahide and then gives 20-second press conferences the bulk of which are composed of silences, when players are pulled from one-on-one interviews at the last minute, when the team and officials sit at the front of the plane eating hot food while the common hackery look on starving - when all these things happen it's best that the team perform with a passion and an excellence that bowls us all over because there isn't going to be much goodwill left in the media.

 

And funny enough, there is going to be less goodwill left among a general public who feel not only that they don't know the current team but also that the side offer very little that can be identified with.

 

In that regard it was nothing short of hilarious to hear Steve Staunton respond to a question about the team's isolation from the public by stating that ye go for walks on the beach, and sometimes go to Malahide. Brilliant!

 

The media are not perfect. Sometimes criticisms are excessive. On the other hand, the rewards at your end are always excessive so it balances out.

 

All the media ask and the general public ask is that the team prepares as well as is humanly possible and gives the green jersey as much as is humanly possible.

 

Not speaking to the media is petulant and childish. Not because we are so charming that you are missing out on the chance to become better people just by mixing with us, but because you leave a vacuum to be filled.

 

On the day before the Germany match, for instance, the FAI nixed an interview this paper had arranged with Stephen Hunt, who was ineligible to play against Germany but was perfectly happy to be interviewed. So the space had to be filled with a critical piece about the current regime.

 

That's not ideal for anyone, but the space unfilled by the meagre harvest from sulky press conferences and nixed interviews always gets filled by analysis pieces and critiques, and without the need on the part of the media to maintain the lifeline of access the pieces get more and more robust.

 

Robbie, it wasn't actually the media who were booing you in Croke Park last week. It was the people who pay your wages. They felt they had been short-changed. And they were right.

 

And seeing you on the Late Late asserting that people booed because of what they read in the paper overestimates the power of the media and underestimates the intelligence of the fan.

 

We, fans and hacks, all have jobs to do, real worries and mortgages and pressures. You are our distraction. You live the life, you score the goals, you wear the green. We're sorry if you think that we have all let you down, but now you know how we've been feeling.

 

 

© 2007 The Irish Times

[El Rojo]

John

 

He's the preferred choice apparently

Excellent piece by Tom Humphreys too ,confirms everything I've been saying about Billy big balls Keane.Whats pissing me off more than anything else is the fact that Staunton and his drinking pals alienated and scapegoated the younger players .Theres some very interesting stories about to hit the print about Stephen Ireland not playing.Its open season on Staunton now because Delaney is trying to save his own skin so all the stories that were under wraps due to His threats are now free to use.The media have the bitbetween their teeth and Stauntons position is untenable.Announcement due on tuesday evening

 

 

 

 

© 2007 The Irish Times

 

What's the story there Gav? PM me if it's a bit edgy...

[Gav]

What's the story there Gav? PM me if it's a bit edgy...

 

not dodgy at all .Anyone with a interest could see it .Staunton not selecting players in the original squad ,then when they get a injury ,actually playing them over the initial squad members .Bringing back Carsley was a slap in the face to potter .O'shit and Keane not being dropable ever ,ditto kilbane.Meanwhile stans only comments to the press were about young lads not being right in the head or not learning quick enough ,while it was his kareoke partner spurning chance after chance while running up bills of€2000 in Lillies and in wrights

Doyle ,long,Hunt,O'Brien,Douglas ,Potter ,Mcgeady ,Kelly and a few others ,have all been hung out to dry by him ,despite WTCT (Walsall Training Cone Technician) playing them out of position ,dropping them over the ineffective buddies and commenting on "their heads" to the media (the one he spoke to)

 

Mcdonnell alludes to it here

 

http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/ireland-a-squad-divided-1199750.html

 

Ireland: A squad divided

 

 

Steve Staunton attempted to bring back elements of the Jack Charlton era in a bid to improve the general mood of the camp

 

 

Dead man walking

By Daniel McDonnell

Friday October 19 2007

 

 

Before the crunch qualifier with Slovakia in Bratislava in early September, the Irish players left their dressing room and climbed a flight of stairs where they were greeted by FAI security man Tony Hickey.

 

 

He was the last person they encountered before entering the playing surface and he exchanged warm handshakes with Robbie Keane and Shay Given and some of the other older players. There was even a bear hug for Kevin Kilbane.

 

Yet from some of the fresher faced members of the panel there was no reaction for Hickey. No handshake, no hug. A minor detail, perhaps, but symptomatic of the divide between old and new in this current squad, the unspoken reality of the Steve Staunton era.

 

This is no particular reflection on Hickey, who is popular with the players that have soldiered with him throughout the years, through the era of Mick McCarthy and Saipan, the World Cup and all the extras that went with it. Understandably, bonds were formed.

 

That is the past, however. And it was to the past that Staunton went when he was appointed as manager of Ireland. Hickey and Mick Byrne, cast out by Brian Kerr, were immediately restored to the mix. Famously, Byrne's return was kept secret until he leapt into Damien Duff's bedroom, waking him up with a hail of kisses. The good old days, indeed.

 

This was the contrast to the DVD addled days of Brian Kerr, where the players were bored to the point of mutinous. Stan, the old dressing room general, was bringing the fun back.

 

During the summer trip to the United States, he elaborated on how the general mood had been improved. "Well it's the little things", said Staunton, "The camaraderie, whether it be a quiz, a singsong, you name it. A keep ball session. The yellow jersey. Different things. They just add to it, and they've all grown to like it."

 

The spin was that the dressing room is now a happy place, where good vibrations are the order of the day. Kerr's dying embers were characterised by a flaccid, passionless display against Switzerland. Aside from the late flurry of activity, Wednesday's performance was equally devoid of this spirit and togetherness that was supposed to pull us through. It was eerily similar to that miserable night in Lansdowne against the Swiss.

 

And that's why the myth that everything is rosy in the Irish camp needs to be extinguished. For it is patently not the case. No pre-match huddle can disguise it. You don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface for a clear example of this, although Stephen Ireland is obviously an exceptional case. Beneath all the speculation and innuendo, numerous sources have confirmed that the Manchester City player was deeply unhappy in the Irish set-up prior to what could be his last game for some time in the green shirt -- the game against Slovakia.

 

He didn't appreciate the banter, most of which centred around suspicious developments regarding his hair. Even more alarmingly, he is understood to have approached senior players looking for a bit of help and was told that he was being too precious.

 

There are plenty more players with reason to be unsatisfied with their current lot -- those who have been victims of Staunton's ludicrous selection policy.

 

Somehow, within every squad, there appears to be thirteen or fourteen players named who are in genuine starting contention, a further seven or eight brought along to make up the numbers, and a couple in exile who come straight into the starting fold once summoned, thus making their initial absence inexplicable. You could forgive them for treading carefully on the red carpet in case it is laced with nails.

 

Exclusion

 

What must Liam Miller make of his exclusion from the initial selection for this double header when he was the man Staunton sent for in an emergency at half time on Wednesday night? What were the likes of Jonathan Douglas and Alan O'Brien, unused completely in those two games, doing there in the first place?

 

Rather than blooding young players methodically, Staunton has merely succeeding in throwing them to the lions before realising his error. Joey O'Brien was quickly sacrificed to make room for Miller on Wednesday. Andy Keogh was withdrawn to a polite reception.

 

He had endured two extremely ineffective games in an unfamiliar role. Practically being used as a convenient excuse. More worrying, however, are persistent whispers that some of the newer brigade and the stalwarts have not quite clicked. What we have now is a far more national team than we have had at any stage in recent memory but also a squad from a variety of backgrounds.

 

Not all of them have come through the hard grind of apprenticeship in English football, spending their lives in a sheltered environment. Instead, we have a more articulate breed, like Kevin Doyle, like Shane Long, like Stephen Hunt who are from different stock. Overnight sensations, if you will, but far more inclined to take responsibility for their mistakes. There's less of the spoofing.

 

Late on Wednesday night, Doyle admitted that aiming for third place in the group was not a task that anyone could get excited about. After another debacle against Cyprus, it was the least of their concerns. There's a bigger picture.

 

And this is where the issue of leadership comes to play, the whole root of the fallacy that this current Irish group are wholly united under one umbrella. The problem is that the manager is effectively still one of the lads.

 

Demeanour

 

All you have to do is watch the demeanour of Staunton and Keane at their frequently embarrassing pre-match press conferences. Watch as they sit side by side, with their arms folded, defensively poised. Sniggering at their own jokes, or the struggles of interpreters and questions from foreign sounding journalists. Not like manager and captain but as colleagues, as team-mates.

 

Like they once were. Add to the mix all the hangers on, like Byrne, with his cheerleading and feverish hugging after every game, and what we essentially have is a clique with the gaffer at the centre of it.

 

They are trying to recreate an atmosphere of days gone by, something that only those involved at the time can understand. It has failed miserably.

 

Of course, not everyone was too enamoured back in the good old days either.

 

There was another Keane that didn't really get it. A chap called Roy, you might have heard of him. He wasn't one for the sing-songs and neither, it seems, are quite a few of the current breed.

 

Not when so many are singing a different tune.

 

- Daniel McDonnell

[El Rojo]

Cheers, I was referring to the Stephen Ireland stuff though.

 

Keane was embarrassing on TV the other night, the idiot.

[martyfree]

If its true about Ireland getting bullied and basically being told where to go when asking for advice its totally disgraceful and has to be addressed

[Gav]

Cheers, I was referring to the Stephen Ireland stuff though.

 

Keane was embarrassing on TV the other night, the idiot.

 

ahh right .Ina nutshell he felt bullied by some of the older players,and when he went to the more senior amongst them for advice ,was pretty much told to put up or piss off

 

Theres a mad rumour doing the rounds as well that we could be docked 3 points.Shane Long was sent off in May 2006 for Ireland's U19 team against Turkey and received a ban.The following March he came of the bench in the1-0 home win against Slovakia.

It looks like he was ineligible to play in that game, Slovakia were in the same qualifying group in the U19 tournament and have only highlighted it recently.

 

There's a chance that the 1-0 win could be reversed and put down as a 3-0 loss, sending us into fifth place in the group, level on points with Wales

[Maldini]

Wasn't there some story of Ireland being held down and ridiculed? Hunt came out and said it was only banter etc. and that he needs to start acting like a man.

 

Also, people keep referring to his "unusual personal situation" I've heard rumours about that too (1st cousin) any truth to this?

[reder]

So what are the chances of Houllier in truth.

[aws]

gav - O'Leary then?

[Gav]

Wasn't there some story of Ireland being held down and ridiculed? Hunt came out and said it was only banter etc. and that he needs to start acting like a man.

 

Also, people keep referring to his "unusual personal situation" I've heard rumours about that too (1st cousin) any truth to this?

 

Thats true - held down on the dressing room floor by senior players while others checked for hair plugs.All down to a guy thats playing shit but spends 2k in Nightclubs

[Gav]

gav - O'Leary then?

 

 

One of his media pals announced his interest in the job ,thenagain after villa ,he'd do any fucking job he can get .

What's likely to happen is that he'll be "mutual consented "out with a pay off,someone will take temp charge of the Welsh game,probably Hughton or someone like that and they'll wait a few months to find someone

[El Rojo]

It'll probably be Pat Devlin or somebody equally inspirational.

 

Heard an interesting thing about Troussier, that he's now living in North Africa and has converted to Islam and goes by the name Omar.

[Gav]

It'll probably be Pat Devlin or somebody equally inspirational.

 

Heard an interesting thing about Troussier, that he's now living in North Africa and has converted to Islam and goes by the name Omar.

 

It won't be Devlin .He's only there because Stan owed him a favour .When Devlin was on charrge of the FAs scheme ,he selected stans brother over a way better fullback,coupled with Devlins love of money ,particularly where Duff is concerned.Hes duffs "advisor" as he doesn't have any agent licences

 

Thas true regarding Troussier .Its too late for him anyhow,they missed the boat with both him and Hiddink,and eventhough the FAI friendly media hacks will tell you it was over money , its rubbish ,they paid staunton 200k more than either wanted .The key with them is they also wanted to bring in their own men for the 19's and 21's as well as with the underage set up but theres too many old men with nice jobs and big pay packets (don givens)that were worried about losing their jobs so they closed ranks

and went for someone that has the personality of a dung beetle ,and twice the charisma

[Dirk]

O'Leary was on Goals On Sunday yesterday, he said he wasn't prepared to talk about the job because somebody else was still in the position, somebody he had played alongside. Which obviously screamed "I want the job".

[martyfree]

Nice bit of timing from O Leary hasnt been seen in ages then all of a sudden he is on goals on sunday