A story still untold

SOCCER MEMOIRS: When the various parties involved in putting this book together agreed the deal it must have seemed safe to presume that Ireland's trip to the World Cup finals would be another of those good-natured romps enjoyed by Jack Charlton's teams in the 1990s.

Certainly the money involved - the authors received an initial fee of some £50,000 compared to the £1.4 million or so paid to Roy Keane and his fellow writer, Eamon Dunphy - suggests that nobody involved expected McCarthy's account of the World Cup campaign to attract much interest from outside of the normally rather limited audience for this sort of project.

The fact, though, that the Irish squad's time in Saipan and Izumo produced the most compelling story of the tournament must have prompted at least a little excitement around the offices of the publishers. All the more so given that within a few days of it becoming clear that Keane would not be returning to Japan, McCarthy refused to engage any further with the media on the matter. Wait for my book, he said, and all will be revealed.

Almost four months later, the book has finally arrived, but McCarthy's story remains largely untold. It seems that the Ireland manager has been little more forthcoming with a journalist he is known to like than he was back in Japan with those whom, he makes abundantly clear in this volume, he dislikes intensely.

There is little here that we did not know before, with McCarthy failing to provide any substantial new details in relation to what he went through as he struggled through to the turmoil of the Keane saga to hold his squad's preparations for the tournament together.

He confides at various times that he felt isolated and lonely and repeatedly makes it clear that he felt at the time that the dispute with Keane might lead to him having to resign his position as manager of the team. Even in the 10 pages devoted to what he describes as "one of the worst" days of his life, the one that followed Keane's extended interview with RTÉ television, there is very little sense of what is really going on behind the scenes from McCarthy's perspective.

Dervan has not done him any favours on this front. It was, for instance, immediately obvious to anybody who saw McCarthy during the day that he received the news of the death of his father, Charlie, that he was devastated by the loss of a man who clearly meant the world to him.

McCarthy was in Cyprus preparing his team for a World Cup qualifier but handled the situation with great dignity. In his book, however, the call from home that brings the bad news is described as "not unexpected but . . . still a smack in the gob". After that, it can hardly come as a surprise that there is an almost complete failure to convey the intensity of emotion that came with the fallout of the Keane affair.

But then McCarthy does not seem to give Dervan a huge amount to work with either. On the one hand, he seems unwilling to relay anything new that might be of real significance - details of the conversations he must surely have had about the Keane situation at the time with friends, family and colleagues for instance. And on the other hand, when dealing with Ireland's games themselves, he steadfastly avoids anything but the very mildest criticism of any of his players.

The latter point is scarcely surprising from a man with such a strong record of loyalty to the members of his squad, although it still seems faintly ridiculous that McCarthy bitterly attacks the media for their criticism of Ian Harte in the build-up to the Spain game when, in his opinion, they do not know what they are talking about, and then effectively concedes that they are right by observing that the left-back himself was aware he was not having a good tournament.

It ensures, however, that his accounts of the games themselves, with the possible exception of the one against Germany, are of little value and this takes a particularly heavy toll on the opening 130 pages, which are comprised almost entirely of his recollections of the qualifying games and what appear to be rewrites of his quotes at the various press conferences along the way.

Like Ireland's World Cup journey itself, things do improve somewhat after the poor start and Dervan, to be fair, does convey McCarthy's manner well in the text. As the Ireland manager dwells, however, with an apparent sense of helplessness on how his popularity might be affected by the Keane affair and then, in the final pages, notes with obvious pride that he would be big enough to accept an apology from the Manchester United midfielder if one were offered - even that success does not do his cause, or that of his book, all that much good.

• Emmet Malone is Soccer Correspondent of The Irish Times and covered the Ireland team's recent World Cup campaign

Ireland's World Cup Diary. By Mick McCarthy with Cathal Dervan. Simon & Schuster/TownHouse, 316pp. €19.99