TV View: Only one winner as Eamon Dunphy collects on each-way bet

It was always going to be a question of what kind of tears would be shed but from the start the famously lachrymose Eamon Dunphy appeared to have all bases covered in Ireland’s make-or-break clash with Italy.

He did after all look to have a good each way bet going on; the prospect of joyful tears if Ireland’s players overcame all, or tears of fury at those same players being let down by Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane: either way an attention payout.

Dunphy’s the master of such astute positional sense. Hook, Brolly & Co remain only pale copycats. Love him or loathe him, you’ll actually only fully appreciate Dunphy when he’s gone. And that ain’t happening anytime soon, baby.

John Giles has spent decades supplying football light on RTÉ with Dunphy bringing the heat. Giles provides credibility. But it’s always been Dunphy who keeps you watching even if only to foam at the eyes in temper at what he says.

So it’s no accident that it is Giles who has got the chop. Dunphy is box office, guaranteed click-bait. He is telly gold because he’s impossible to ignore, le s**t stirrer extraordinaire, seemingly impervious to time and trend.

Media world

It’s not just telly anymore either. The modern media world could have been designed to suit, all snappy sound-bites which provoke mass howling indignation. Spaces like this help in perpetuating the whole thing too – it’s all attention.

So if in theory the concept of a celebrity journalist is oxymoronic then no doubt the man himself would dismiss such a verdict as jealousy from those too moronic to do what he does.

And it’s not like just anyone can do it. Possessed of fluency and a capacity for swerve that borders on shameless but which is often salvaged by the ‘get out of jail’ card known as passion, Dunphy continues to be able to both generate, and then thrive, on his own controversy.

Martin O’Neill must have thought he was cuffing Dunphy into silence with that “good player” dig prior to going to France. But if he reckoned on needling Dunphy into submission he badly miscalculated.

Such stuff is mother’s media milk, and if there’s a certain opportunism involved, there’s some value too because there’s enough complacent cheer-leading around. And if nothing else, Dunphy always brings flamboyance to the party.

Before last night’s match he kept upping the ante surrounding Martin O’Neill’s team selection. “Odd” quickly morphed into “quirky,” onto “there’s no way I’d have picked it,” before quickly gathering steam towards “can’t justify it rationally.”

By kick-off he’d fully got into his stride, underplaying the circumstances of Ireland’s must-win game with typical restraint.

“Two years and nine months of this new management and they have a new team – for the biggest game of all time,” he announced. “It’s a terrible selection, shocking.”

Dunphy has always specialised in such huge sweeping generalisations which kick off themes that both Giles and Liam Brady can also riff on. After an earlier Robbie Keane interview about the failure of young Irish talent to break through, he came up with a beauty.

“Soccer, as we’ve known it, is dead,” Dunphy proclaimed. “The game is dying everywhere because it’s not being played on the streets. It’s an old refrain, but true. It’s an international problem but for us it’s nearly terminal.”

Giles enthusiastically picked up the street baton and balefully gave third-level education a clatter with it in terms of its impact on football.

If it all sounded very ‘In My Day’ Dunphy didn’t care - “When I was a kid there were 50 guys walking the streets of Dublin with the skills Messi had. And I knew them all. Now you wouldn’t get 50 in Europe.”

As always if the logic was bonkers it was hard to fault the delivery.

If Liam Brady was noticeably more upbeat about Ireland’s prospects, Giles took his cue from Dunphy, and all three agreed much would depend on what way Italy would approach the game. But the panel’s tone and agenda is always set by Dunphy.

From the first shots of grinning and joking Italians in the tunnel it looked like the opposition were set to indulge in what in racing terminology is known as an ‘easy.’ In contrast Ireland were clearly trying for their lives.

It wasn’t pretty, certainly not in the same flamboyant league as a vintage half-time swerve by Dunphy - “the performance vindicates the selection of the team.” Brady described it as “Jack Charlton football” and even Giles conceded the team’s limitations made it Ireland’s most effective way of playing.

That was quite a sea-change by Irish football’s sage, but in the attention stakes there’s only ever one winner.

And it looked like there was a tear in his eye too after collecting on the win.