When a rabbit's foot is bad luck

Have you been watching Band of Brothers on the Beeb? It's sort of Saving Private Ryan Lite. Lots of sepia leaking into the battle scenes and poor young sappers glancing hopefully up from their foxholes and trenches only for a bullet to whistle clean through their handsome heads.

The unlucky demise is the signature moment in almost every episode. Just as a chap is beginning to relax, just when he has a happy thought, just when he thinks of his girl back home, there's a bang and there's a whiz and then there's brain spilled everywhere.

It's all very unfortunate, but to keep themselves going the chaps keep telling each other that it could be worse: they could be Mick McCarthy. Unluckiest man they ever knew. They gather in their trenches and tell the stories.

Now, let's not exaggerate here. I mean some of the strokes of bad luck which fate has beaten McCarthy up with have been ordinary. He's rebuilding an attack and Keith O'Neill turns out to be as robust as Howard Hughes in his dotage and David Connolly gets kidnapped by the normally civilised Dutch and gets held hostage for several years. Fine. Not much imagination there.

That's okay. That stuff almost counts as good luck for McCarthy. When there is always a hole in the bucket that is central defence, when two of your potentially most gifted players end up on the bonnet of a car which turns out to be owned by a garda, when early in your tenure you fall victim to a prank like somebody pretending to be Roy Keane calling you on the phone, when Phil Babb is missing entirely one weekend when you need him - well, you have some perspective. You are not easily impressed when it comes to your own bad luck.

However, there's bad luck and then there's the sort of bad luck McCarthy has. Pure, distilled bad luck, 100 per cent proof. The sort that makes you look to the skies and ask Allah what exactly the problem is.

What happened? Walked under a ladder being used by a witch? Startled by a black cat while doing so? Caused you to drop that large mirror? Just recovering when two bolts of lightning strike the keyring hanging from your belt, charring beyond recognition the lucky rabbit's foot you've been carrying. Eerie, given that you would receive a solicitor's letter from the rabbit's lawyer that very afternoon.

I mean, whassup Mick? You get your accursed team in between Yugoslavia and Croatia in the only qualifying group where genocide has been a consideration. You wind up missing the European finals to a goal conceded in injury time to Macedonia in a moment when your central defence, which usually moves at the speed of molasses, suddenly decelerates.

For a play-off treat you are asked to travel by planes, trains and automobiles to the furthermost point of Turkey, there to suffer the further slings and arrows due to your injury-poxed team. Slings and arrows are meant literally in that sentence.

Top-quality bad luck, but nothing compared to the divine but cruel hoax which is about to be played on you. Endgame seems to come when you are placed in a World Cup group with Holland and Portugal. You're goose, sayeth the experts, is surely cooked now . . .

Yet your team pass through that valley of darkness unbeaten. That they pick up 24 points along the way is a remarkable achievement. The team is cohesive, if not beautiful, and it has Roy Keane as its lodestar, if not its lone star. They get back to Dodge City with their 24 points and ask to have it weighed.

Mick is Mick of course. Fork in hand when it is lashing consommΘ. This 24-point, unbeaten record doesn't buy what you think it should. No sir. Lesser hauls have been rewarded with a ticket to the big dance but, sad to say Sir, not only does that not get you in to the dance, but being the best second-placed finisher in Europe doesn't cut it, because this time there are two host nations. See.

So this time, I'm afraid Sir, your 24 points gets you into a play-off. You could accept that, but, elsewhere, England stumble straight into the finals having had one manager crack up during their campaign and having seen their most reviled player at the last World Cup secure them an undeserved home draw against Greece. Elsewhere, the United States of America are practically carried across the finish line by FIFA.

You? Well, you have a play-off date against an Asian team yet to be decided. Could be worse? Sure it could. Indeed it will be. Just wait till September 11th. War breaks out. You hardly notice. War is nothing new. You've dealt with war, with plague, with pestilence and with Mark Kennedy in your years in charge. War? Phooey.

Naturally, too, the Asian qualifying group goes all wrong. With the gloomy inevitability which hangs over the doomed, Iran somehow contrive not to win their qualifying group and get shunted into a play-off. Almost certainly they will be Ireland's opponents next month. After China, they are the most accomplished side in the region. They play with a confidence and an unpredictability which is scary. Of course they do.

Then, of course, the injury lists begin coming in. For big games, especially for play-offs, Irish injury lists always begin at the top of the order of merit. This is a huge game, so the names Roy Keane, Steve Carr, Damien Duff and Niall Quinn are automatic injury choices. Kevin Kilbane is rewarded for a fine performance against Cyprus by making the casualty list. If any further comment were needed on Robbie Keane's run without scoring an international goal, the fact that his health has been spared should suffice.

Of course it is early days yet. Steve Staunton is playing well enough at Villa and has become central enough to Irish hopes that he can confidently expect to do his cruciate ligament any day now.

The beauty of it all is that despite taking the field with a Leinster senior league selection, Ireland will win the first leg two-nil. It's the three late goals (the last a dubious penalty) that do for plucky nine-man Ireland in Tehran that will be hard to swallow.

Personally, I'll be blaming McCarthy and his tactical naivete.