Out of the pan and into the fire

Nobody will know better than Sammy McIlroy that as far as Northern Ireland football is concerned, the past is a different country. It does not require a visionary or a mystic to realise that the footballing vista here has changed beyond all recognition in the 15 years since the newly-appointed international team manager was part of a squad that qualified for successive World Cups in 1982 and 1986.

And as the new boy settles into his first full week in charge he might like to chew over a statistic or two which should give him some indication of the extent of the challenge that lies ahead over the next two years.

The last full programme of games in the English Premiership was played 10 days ago on January 3rd when eight games involving 16 clubs completed the Christmas and New Year schedule. A total of 176 players started those games in a league that has traditionally been both a nursery and a finishing school for generations of Northern Ireland players.

But of those 176, only three - Gerry Taggart and Neil Lennon of Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday's Ian Nolan - were Northern Ireland internationals. And while two more players - Steve Lomas and Aaron Hughes - missed the Newcastle-West Ham game because of injury, it is a fairly damning indication of the current parlous state of the game here.

It is also a football lifetime away from the golden 10-year period that spanned the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s when Northern Ireland players were regular fixtures in the very best English sides. McIlroy, Mal Donaghy and Jimmy Nicholl were at Manchester United, Pat Jennings and Pat Rice were Arsenal regulars and Martin O'Neill was with Nottingham Forest. Now not one of the top six clubs in England has a Northern Ireland player in its first team squad.

It should hardly be a surprise, then, that with so few players in the top flight in England, Northern Ireland should be limping along in the international foothills and ranked 84th in the FIFA World rankings. Of most concern will be that the meagre Premiership contingent is made up of defenders and midfielders without a single attacking player among them. Sammy McIlroy might be entitled to wonder where the next Northern Ireland goal is going to come from.

Much has been made of his elevation to the ranks of international management from the lowly confines of Macclesfield Town. There is nothing like a perceived football rags-to-riches story to get the local press boys humming with excitement. The more prosaic truth is that Sammy McIlroy has merely substituted the struggle of running a poorly resourced club side short on genuine talent for an international team of an almost identical pedigree.

McIlroy has not been helped in the short term at least by the barely-suppressed notion that he was the Irish Football Association's second choice. Once the ill-advised experiment of parachuting in the high profile figure of Lawrie McMenemy, a man who was very obviously trying to surf the wave of past glories, had been abandoned, it was inevitable that the IFA would return to the comfort blanket of an "old boy" appointment.

And if Northern Ireland players are in short supply in the English Premiership, suitably qualified managers amount to a constituency of just one - Leicester's Martin O'Neill. As the board at that club buckled under the pressure of some nasty in-fighting during the winter, there was just the outside chance that O'Neill might become available in the short to medium term future and this quickly became the IFA's favoured approach.

However, even if the Leicester meltdown had not resolved itself in favour of the faction backed by O'Neill, it is inconceivable that there would not have been a raft of top Premiership jobs dangled in front of him if not immediately, then certainly at the end of this season. Gratifying though it might have been for O'Neill to attempt the managerial trick of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear by taking on the Northern Ireland job, it would have also spelt professional suicide and suggested a real lack of managerial ambition on his part.

By this stage the IFA's efforts were becoming ever more desperate and it was even prepared to dangle the carrot of a part-time post in front of O'Neill. Exhibiting considerably more common sense and appreciation of the rigours of the real world than his potential employers, the Leicester manager ruled that out of hand, stating publicly that the job of an international manager was either a full-time commitment or there was no point in bothering. The net effect of all of that was to clear the way for McIlroy, the only other credible candidate.

And as openly acknowledged second-choices go, his credentials stand up to considerable scrutiny. His east Belfast background will go down well with the Northern Ireland core support as will the vigour and engagement he showed during his long international career in a Northern Ireland shirt. The contrast with the aloof and almost dispassionate approach of his predecessor will be fairly stark. Not for McIlroy the comfort of a cashmere coat and nice seat in the stand. On his past form at Macclesfield, he is more likely to play every ball and live every tackle along with his players. If nothing else, the first few Northern Ireland games should be worth keeping an eye on just to see the new man lock horns with the fourth official as he strains at the leash on the Windsor Park sidelines.

McIlroy's most immediate task is obvious. In a situation where goals scored have made hen's teeth appear plentiful, the way forward must be to shore up things at the back and give the rest of the team a chance by stemming the tide of goals being conceded.

After that it is pretty much a leap into the dark and a case of clinging to the hope that a Robbie Keane or a Kevin Kilbane will appear from somewhere over the next few years.

The prospects of qualifying from a World Cup qualifying group that contains Denmark, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Iceland and Malta are, on current form, remote in the extreme. In the circumstances, finishing third would be something of an achievement. That is how bad things are.