Please Dave, let your babies go

David O'Leary was on the Late Late Show on Friday night. Big and polite and immensely likeable. He's not gabby enough to be a natural on the chat show circuit, but he can hold his own and garnishes his sentences with a little twist of humour which goes over well.

Dave has all the right touches. Not many Premiership managers would point to their Ma and Da sitting proudly in the audience when they go on talk shows. Dave pulled it off without being corny. There is something large and reassuring about the fellow which makes everything he does seem spangled with a little quality.

It was interesting to watch him in action. There is a distance between the green light cordiality of television studios and the dank meanness of the professional game, and Dave bridges it comfortably. Something of the toughness which Dave brings to the party is in evidence in two issues not suitable to in-depth treatment on the Late Late Show.

The infamous Icelandic triangular tournament is an interesting jumping off point for the current controversies. Dave O'Leary was asked about it again on Friday and once more he barked the same tune with the same resentful timbre to his voice. Jack Charlton was wrong. Dave O'Leary, a fine centre half in his prime, was right.

The two games he cried off on were played on the 25th and 27th of May 1986, a Sunday and a Tuesday. For those given to hand-on-hearts expressions of how much they love to play for their country it was a three-day investment of time which offered the chance to prove a thing or two to a new manager.

Family holiday or not, Dave O'Leary may have had nothing to prove as a footballer right then, but he had points to make as a candidate for any Charlton team.

What did we know about Charlton at that stage? Well, he was an awkward cuss. He didn't rate culture as a virtue in his centre halves. His horses for courses policy was informed by the fact that he won a World Cup medal on a team which lacked the great star of the era, Jimmy Greaves.

We knew this, and we knew that he was a 4-42 man, that he had a clear picture of how he wanted Ireland to play and that he had five good centre halves available: Mick McCarthy, Kevin Moran, Mark Lawrenson, Dave O'Leary and Paul McGrath.

Under those circumstances, if I wanted to play for my country I would have gone and rejoined the family a few days later or got the money back on the holiday. Dave gambled and it didn't pay off.

He wasn't to know what would follow. Ireland won their first and only trophy in Iceland that week. It was a girding experience for the squad and the Moran/McCarthy partnership was born. Over the following 20 games, till O'Le ary won his 41st cap, Ireland conceded just nine goals, had 13 clean sheets, qualified for and graced the European Championship finals and had the longest run of successive wins (eight) the country has recorded.

We don't know the degree of animosity that existed between Charlton and O'Leary at that stage, just that for a man with a reputation for being spiteful enough to cut off his nose to spite his face, Charlton, as a manager, was happy to call O'Leary back when he needed him and Dave went on to win 68 caps in all. The player, on the other hand, must have gone through some anguish watching Ireland play in the Euro '88 finals without him.

O'Leary gambled with his fine reputation by not going to Iceland in 1986. The opportunity to play for Ireland didn't come around again for some time. The bitterness which still surfaces in his voice when he talks about the incident is remarkable, however, coming from a man who won everything in the game and who got to take the most famous penalty kick in Irish football history.

THE argument is long dead, really, but that lingering resentment of O'Leary's makes it all the more strange that he is the man who is digging his heels in to stop Stephen McPhail, Paul Donnelly and Damien Lynch from travelling to Nigeria to play in the Under-20 World Cup next month.

That O'Leary, upon whom great riches and honours were bestowed by football, still chafes at having missed a tournament 11 years ago and seeks to deny three kids, who might never make it in the game, the chance to play in the most important tournament they may ever compete in, is a strange twist.

Leeds United alone of English clubs remain sullenly unconvinced by the assurances given by various agencies that the medical procedures and contingency plans in place for players in Nigeria will be adequate and safe.

One suspects, of course, that it is McPhail who is at the nub of their worries. A brilliantly languid player cursed with a laconic attitude towards the game, McPhail could develop into the next Liam Brady or the next Paul Byrne, depending on the next year or two. It is understandable that Leeds want him around. But it is short-sighted in the extreme to deny him the chance to grow a little amidst his peer group.

The greatest injustice of the Charlton era was not the dropping of Dave O'Leary (keenly though he may have felt it), but the dropping of all interest in the youth set-up. Coincidentally, it was at Elland Road that Charlton marched into Liam Tuohy's dressing-room and set in train the sequence of events which would lead to an entire generation of Irish youngsters being denied the opportunity of meaningful international involvement at youth level. Nobody suggests that they would all have developed into world beaters, but even those who withered would have played out their journeymen careers with some good memories.

Ironies abound of course. Howard Wilkinson, whose legacy at Leeds is the bountiful youth harvest which O'Leary now terms his "babies", has opted not to discommode clubs by selecting good and eligible players from the Premiership. This flatly patronising Little Englander attitude to what is a serious and worthwhile FIFA competition has done Brian Kerr no favours. Rest assured, however, that England will be the only side not bringing their best available outfit to the party.

It's a small world and what goes around comes around. O'Leary, in the office once occupied by Wilkinson, at the club once girdled by Charlton, nurturing the players Wilkinson grew from seedlings, has a lot to say about decency in football and decency in sport. Keeping young players home from a tournament which may be the highlight of their careers is an act which doesn't sit easily with his air of wounded dignity on other matters.