Week a long time in four-year plan

The FAI and Steve Staunton got lucky this week. Tom Humphries looks at the continuing fault lines in the present Ireland set-up.

Maury Ballstein: What do we do when we fall off the horse?

Derek Zoolander: (thoughtfully looking up and mouthing the words silently) . . . off the horse?

Maury Ballstein: (looking to supply finish) . . . we . . . get back on the horse!

Derek Zoolander: Sorry, Maury. I'm not a gymnast.

- Zoolander

Perhaps it's all best viewed in the context of entertainment. Just a group of brooding, pampered boy stars blinking beneath the arc lights. They stand there swaddled by easy money, shielded from the real world and living on a stage where everything is oversized and out of kilter.

They are paid excessively and they are praised excessively for their routine application to professional duty. And when they slip, it is as if the gods are angry. The clouds darken and the hysterical tabloids thunder. The boys pout.

Perhaps it's that simple.

The past seven days in the life of the Republic of Ireland soccer team have certainly been entertainment. If you were to pitch the scenario as a movie idea you'd say pantomime meets light opera. Yet to attribute all Ireland's woes to either the novice manager or his amply paid players is simplistic. There's a lot going on.

Firstly it should be said that Steve Staunton got lucky on Wednesday night. His side deserved a draw and as it happened the Czechs themselves seldom looked very interested in any other outcome. Stan got lucky that it was the Czechs we were playing on Wednesday. Had the results of the last week come in reverse order the cutler of Merrion Square would have been reaching for his whetstone.

Had the fixtures been reversed, had Ireland drawn a home game they might have won, throwing away a lead within the space of two minutes, and then gone to Cyprus and got thumped 5-2 it would be all over now. Our perceptions of the one-all draw would be entirely different. As it was, the landmark abjectness of the Nicosia performance made it easy to display Wednesday night's passion and competence in a rosy light.

After Cyprus, most rational people would have thought the only way was up. We are a nation of dark-souled pessimists, however, and in our hearts we expected gruesome sights on Wednesday night. We got professionalism, we got a goal and we earned a point. Enough for now.

Enough certainly for Steve Staunton, who, despite his protestations about not reading the media and just being a lil ole gaffer taking care of business, will know that he dodged a bullet this week and that any ceasefire is unlikely to be permanent.

On Thursday morning the stark Group D table bore no asterisk telling us what had gone on. Ireland lay sixth, a point ahead of San Marino, who have a game in hand. Realistically there is now no hope of qualification and next year's novel fixtures in Croke Park could be a grim procession of meaningless games.

Wednesday night in Lansdowne was extraordinary in that it reminded us of how easy it is to kindle Irish passion about its football team. A bit of work and graft and honesty is enough to bring a home crowd to its feet and an unconvinced press box in line. Ireland didn't match the Czech Republic for class or touch but attempting to make up for that with passion and zest satisfied us all.

Questions linger though. How much of Wednesday night was down to what Steve Staunton wrought on the training ground on Monday and Tuesday and how much was down to mere wounded pride? Any team pilloried and derided as the Irish were after Cyprus would surely be dangerous and passionate playing at home days later.

Only time will tell what is going on in the minds of the players and whether Steve Staunton has turned a corner with them. Will Wednesday's performance become the base level of application for the remainder of the group games or will Ireland slide back into the same listlessness which has marred our play for some years now?

Staunton knows the next three fixtures (two with San Marino and one with Wales in Croke Park) must yield nine points. Then he's back to the testing ground. Slovakia visit Croke Park days after Wales play there and as such represent the next real examination of the manager's credentials.

In the meantime Staunton won't need an international football consultant to help him appreciate that he hasn't rooted out all the malign matter Cyprus exposed. The concession of the Czech goal seemed harsh at first on young Paul McShane, whose tigerish performance in the shadow of the immense Jan Koller had set the tone for the evening. Replays, however, showed John O'Shea with his back turned to the play as the elegant and perceptive Tomas Rosicky slipped the ball to Koller.

With that went any chance to savour, let alone defend, a surprise lead.

Not to be forgotten either were the occasions when the Czechs casually cut through us only to bungle fine chances. Ireland had chances too but the worst miss, that by Robbie Keane (right inset) towards the end, represented part of a continuum of bad form for Keane, something which must put his continued captaincy in jeopardy.

There are broader matters too which reflect bad handling on the part of the young manager. The promotion of Terry Dixon, a player with 10 appearances for the Spurs Under-18s and none for their reserves, spoke of clumsy PR spin. And while it's true that in central midfield we look weak just now, the pursuit of Bolton's unwilling Oirishman Kevin Nolan has been both unbecoming and a slap in the face to any "young pretenders" who might have felt they had a chance to be part of the Great Four Year Plan and of whom Staunton claimed to be thinking when he continually ignored Lee Carsley.

The stalking of Nolan makes an odd counterpoint to the inexplicable standoff with poor Carsley. The player, aware no doubt he is no superman but could do a job, had to offer himself repeatedly for service and was ignored until it appeared Ireland might have to leave a blank space in the centre of midfield. Carsley, with hitherto unsuspected graciousness, still came when finally beckoned, performed well and then had to read the manager's surprising quote that he had known all along what Lee Carsley could do. But, Stan . . .

Carsley is an interesting case in that he is a journeyman pro given an opportunity at international level by Mick McCarthy. He has his grievances and raises uncomfortable questions about our own attitudes to Irish players who carry English accents. Perhaps also he challenges our expectations of the national team. For decades we have been spoiled. Johnny Giles, Liam Brady, Mark Lawrenson, Paul McGrath and Roy Keane were all from the very top drawer of the talent cabinet and were backed up by a core of more-than-decent talents whose default setting was passion and leadership.

We don't have either sort of player anymore and that's what made the appointment of Staunton such a rash gamble.

Facing into the next half decade of football without any world-class players (Shay Given may be the exception), we genuinely needed that world-class manager the FAI claimed to be headhunting. The future has more Lee Carsleys than Roy Keanes. We need somebody who can extract the best from ordinary but willing players.

In the short term we are facing something of a dip in talent available. When English clubs were forced to cough up adequate compensation to Irish nurseries a few years ago they simply baulked at the prospect. While this year the number of young players going across the water will be around the 35, 36 mark, three years ago it had slipped to less than half that at 15 or 16 kids a year.

Eoin Hand, the FAI's career-guidance officer, knows the English soccer landscape well. Things are changing and evolving from an Irish perspective.

"Clubs now are offering just a scholarship instead of a professional contract. Before, they were offering pro contracts with scholarships attached. It's as if they agreed with each other, let's none of us offer the pro contract anymore. So the offers are very much lower than two or three years ago and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing."

It's not a bad thing. The sense of entitlement which pervades the Irish senior set-up is produced through a combination of the character of those boys going across when young and the nature of what's on offer to them.

"We've seen a lot of guys who've had a good offer go to England for a big club and they're demotivated," continues Hand. "Kids being given 50 grand to sign on and let's say £400 a week when they are 17. Measure that against the kid who hasn't been offered anything yet. It's hard to retain the edge at 17 when you know you have the pro contract. Do they apply themselves fully during that contract? I tell the parent to imagine if, instead of football, the boy had aspirations to be a doctor and a college came in and said we'll train him, give him accommodation and a little spending money and make sure he works hard. They'd jump at it.

"When we talk about the comfort zone in terms of the present team, it can present a problem. It's tougher for young lads to come to the top level. Lower-level clubs will spend more time bringing a kid through and there's where we'll be looking. A young lad goes to one of the big clubs - he's a wealthy boy straight away with all the distractions that involves. If you're not switched on about football and your passion for it, like a Roy Keane, it might be that your application can be found wanting at times when it gets tough. That's human nature. The clubs don't mind. It's a numbers game for them."

If Hand were sending a son of his across it would be to an Ipswich, a Wolves or a Southampton he would direct him. It is to the less-fashionable backwaters and perhaps to tough journeymen who can be cajoled into good performances that we will be looking in the future.

Kevin Kilbanes and Carsleys are our lot, and when we speak of four-year plans there are no guarantees things will be different. For us it's a numbers game too. A little over four years ago we might have expected Colin Healy, Liam Miller and Sean Thornton to be the main contenders for central midfield. We still had hopes for Richie Partridge's career and Willo Flood was being whispered as a certainty for the next-big-thing stakes. If you were in the know you spoke about a kid called Anthony Stokes. Three years ago we noted Paul McShane winning an FA Youth Cup with Manchester United.

McShane has survived to the extent of making a fine international debut as a West Brom player. We should be wary of counting any other chickens before they hatch though. And count them we do. Billy Clarke had scored two goals off the bench for Ipswich when the Daily Mail described him last month as Ireland's new wonder boy. Billy himself was reported as saying happily he just couldn't "stop scoring".

Yet ahead of him in an Ipswich set-up (which, as Eoin Hand says, assiduously grooms and works with Irish talent) have gone the cautionary tales Shane Supple and Owen Garvan. Supple led the Ipswich youth side to an FA Youth Cup in 2005. He became first-team goalkeeper last year. This season his form has abandoned him and he is back on the bench. As for Garvan, tipped as possibly the best midfielder outside of the Premiership last year when he made 31 first-team appearances, he faces months on the sidelines suffering from post-viral fatigue syndrome. And the other wonder boy, Terry Dixon at Spurs? Facing a second operation on his knee at 16 years of age.

Four-year plans don't work in an environment where there are so many more Next Big Things than there are Actual Big Things. They don't work with a team where so many ordinary players are convinced they are Actual Big Things. The Irish team is what it is and needs the best 11 available to be on the pitch at any given time.

Staunton got a decent result on Wednesday but not even a comprehensive thrashing of the visitors would have erased memories of the incompetence in Nicosia. The challenge is to achieve game on game improvement.

Mick McCarthy's life and (even more so) that of Brian Kerr were a constant trail around the stadiums and backwater grounds of Britain networking with reserve and youth coaches and unearthing players who might play for us.

It's a numbers game. Nobody got through the filter.

Such application appears lacking at present and the comical instance of Staunton claiming to have watched Gary Doherty and Paddy McCarthy in action against each other some weeks back when Norwich and Leicester don't actually meet till the end of next month should have furrowed brows.

The red card in Stuttgart, the apparent inability to see the awkward optics of the Pat Devlin/Alan O'Brien connection. Carsley, Nolan, and Sean St Ledger have all been potholes on the road to where we are now.

If Staunton needed any confirmation of how tenuous his position can become overnight he didn't have to look towards the rather overwrought media, he need only have parsed John Delaney's rather Clintonesque utterances on Tuesday about everybody being happy today.

Not only was there no four-year plan mentioned. There was no mention of the day after tomorrow.

Are Given, Richard Dunne, Damien Duff, Keane and others motivated by talk of four-year plans and the day after tomorrow? Are they genuinely inspired by their new manager and erstwhile drinking buddy? Are there really any wonderkids out there?

We have ordinary players with big egos. About that we can do little except appoint an extraordinary manager. The Group D table suggests we have eschewed that option too, however. Staunton may in time become a great manager but at the moment what we need is a master and not an apprentice.

The four-year plan and Bobby Robson were good wheezes, tactics founded in the arts of delay and obfuscation, an expression of the old political saw that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. Let Bobby and the four-year plan be cleared away now so that we can better examine the situation.

John Delaney is smart enough to have read and absorbed Alexis de Tocqueville, who advised not only about complex truths but that "if one wishes to know the real power of the press, one should pay attention not to what it says, but to the way in which it is listened to . . ."

Interesting times ahead and many complex truths to be unraveled.