Ian O’Riordan: Impressive athleticism a feature of Irish soccer team

Something about the way the Irish players moved around the Stade de France last Monday evening reminded me of the time we got trapped in a lift with Roy Keane. That’s a few years back now – 13, to be exact – and Keane was in the absolute prime of his athleticism, all bronzed and chiselled and divine presence.

He was a little out of character, smiling warmly with whoever he was with, as you’d expect though, as we were exiting the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics in Croke Park.

Anyone who has been in that stadium lift will know it has a mind of its own, so instead of stopping on level two, we ended up in the basement, then back up on level six, before the whole thing jammed for a few minutes.

It was there, smiling warmly myself after the evening that was in it, that I told Keane he was “looking very fit”, then asked had he heard from Mark Carroll at all lately. It was a slightly loaded question, knowing they were the same age, born and raised on the same north side of Cork city, and had shared several Cork junior sports star awards, Keane in football, Carroll in distance running.

Straightaway Keane was engaged. No, they hadn’t talked in a while but the respect seemed enduringly mutual. “And by the way,” I added, “he always thought you would have made a great distance runner.”

“Do ye think so?” he replied, clearly excited by the thought. “Why’s that?”  Of all the throwaway athletic traits these days, to hear someone has “a great engine” may be the most common, yet few people will know what that truly means more than Keane and Carroll.

So much so that their sporting careers may well have swapped paths, except of course for the fact we don’t choose our sport, our sport chooses us.

Still I’ve always said Carroll must be our most underrated distance runner of all time, because no one had a greater engine than his. There was a timely reminder of that earlier this month, with all those words of high praise for Mo Farah, after he ran a new British record of 7:32.62 for 3,000m, in Birmingham, eclipsing the previous mark which had stood to Dave Moorcroft for 34 years. As impressive a run as Farah’s was, it’s still over two seconds short of Carroll’s Irish record of 7:30.36, which he ran in Monaco, back in 1999.

Carroll, no less than Keane, was always the epitome of professionalism, the ultimate beacon for young distance runners to aspire to, the only sorry part about that being his likes just aren’t there anymore, for whatever reason.

That 7:30.36 of his must be the safest record in the books, unless Irish athletics can somehow begin to choose more athletes like him.  Which brings me back to the Stade de France, last Monday, and the great engines the Irish players were moving around with. Watching that game against Sweden, through the lonely eyes of the distance runner, it was as if Keane’s influence and inspiration was at last playing out in full alongside them.

More than any other Republic of Ireland team of late, they seemed in the absolute prime of their athleticism, at times carrying themselves like distance runners: in line with gravity, not defying it, the neat cadence, elbows tucked in, and yes, running with their legs, not on them.

Robbie Brady, I’ve little doubt, would have made a great distance runner. The way Séamus Coleman turned Martin Olsson inside out, before setting up Wes Hoolahan’s wonder goal, was to me more about athleticism than skill, and his nifty, upright and slightly rolling style would be every bit as home on the running track as the football pitch. As indeed it would the GAA pitch, had football not chosen Coleman, and left him to play with Na Cealla Beage in Killybegs.  It was also interesting to read Brady’s comment about Hoolahan afterwards, how “he’s in unbelievable shape” and “seems to be getting better with age”, because most distance runners are still in their prime at 34. Exactly how much Keane has influenced this so-called late flourishing is unclear although it’s hardly just coincidental.

Jeff Hendrick, Ciaran Clark and Glenn Whelan also move around with the natural gait of an athlete as much as a footballer, and while none of this sets them apart from any other team in the tournament, it does appear to set them apart from the pre Keane-Martin O’Neill teams of the last decade. Again, maybe because only people like Keane understand what it means to have a great engine.

And then there’s Shane Long. For all the claims that he was equally deft at hurling during his teenage years in Tipperary, his sporting foundation actually lies in athletics, and his underage years with Slieveardagh AC.

There, Long won a string of national titles, indoors and outdoors, including an under-16 double over the 100m and 250m hurdles in Tullamore back in 2002.

That’s not saying athletics lost Long to football because ultimately he didn’t choose his sport, his sport chose him.

These things also work both ways. Mark English, still our best prospect of making some sort of impact on the Rio Olympics later this summer, started out playing Gaelic football, firstly with his school, St Eunan’s, and later his club, Letterkenny Gaels, before 800m running eventually chose him.

Only now, given that increasingly impressive athleticism of Irish football, it’s becoming so much easier for a young Shane Long or Mark English or indeed a young Mark Carroll to decide what sport they’d want to choose them.