I held this over from yesterday's mess because it deserved a post all of its own. Here's Éamon Dunphy on BBC Radio Five Live on Monday talking about Roy Keane:
He's commenting on the Irish team manager's job, he's commenting on other clubs - he's rambling and it's really ridiculous. And I think what's happened to Roy Keane is that he began to believe the Roy Keane mythology and he thinks that every time he pontificates on a matter...and it does make headlines, there's no question about it...but I think he's lost the plot...he's lost the plot, big time.
Just breathe in that irony. Is his chutzpah contemptible? Admirable? Bloody hilarious?
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I've been trying to write a post about Éamon Dunphy and Lord, how I've struggled. As someone once said, I just don't know where to begin. Dunphy was the basis of a character in a hit comic musical, but the more you think about him, the more you realise that there should be an opera or an epic poem or a portrait written about him and, so help me, I'm not the person to do that.
So what to do? I could simply call him "a bleating, know-nothing, blowhard, self-serving, egomaniacal, bufoonish hack" and leave it at that, except I did that already.
Instead, and in the absence of a unified, coherent post, I give you some rough sketches, like some space dust which could have coalesced to form a medium-sized plant just the right distance from its star and with plentiful life-giving water and oxygen, but instead merely formed a group of misshapen asteroids notable chiefly for their deposits of sulphur. Or, some text padded out with some other tat. Or, if you feel like being totally bullshitted, a Multimedia Presentation. Don't have nightmares, kids.
Soundtrack:
"He's a gentleman, he's a class act, he's a rebel, and he stands up to bullies"
Maybe enlightenment is a chimera. Maybe it's foolish to read anything into it all beyond what is manifest.
So you're a TV company with the rights to some live football. You can't just show the game and be done with it - it's not the old days - so you have to pad out the rest of the programme with something. It's not so hard to do, because there is a slew of people who have been training for this very purpose for years, weekly, after their shower and meticulous hair-gel-and-cologne application. It's not difficult: all you need are a footballing philosophy which amounts to When In Doubt, Kick It Out, and its verbal equivalent, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing.
All the world's a stage, and you're fabulous. Why not take a whacking great powerboat to this sea of mediocrity?
Éamon Dunphy knows what's what. Ever taken a deep sniff out of a bottle of vanilla essence? Makes you puke. As for intelligent insight: show me Stephen Hawking's studio deal, baby.
Euro '84 isn't Michel "nine goals, player of the tournament and captain of the winning team" Platini's moment, it's Éamon "Platini's a good player, not a great player" Dunphy's. The Charlton era is defined almost as much by the flying pencil of an indignant Éamo as for the football (though few remember the 50p cloth cap he briefly donned in a moment of silliness after the Romania game).
Of course, the whole Saipan business in 2002, which immediately cleft a nation in two, divorce referendum stylee, became all about Dunphy: the impassioned defences of Roy Keane; the tie in the colours of Cameroon he wore to the studio for Ireland's first World Cup game; the suspension showing up "tired and emotional" for an early morning World Cup kick-off. It's a show, and a show needs a star.
RTÉ Two's live coverage of Ireland's 1-0 defeat of Cyprus in their 2010 World Cup Qualifier match drew a huge audience last night. The audience peaked directly after the final whistle when 752,000 people tuned in for RTÉ's analysis of the game...
...517,000 people tuned in for the entire duration of the programme...
That is to say, there are people who will watch RTE's post-match analysis but won't watch the game the panel are discussing. It's arguable whether John Giles and Liam Brady, two of the greatest Irish footballers ever, are more famous for their TV work than for their football. It's inarguable that Dunphy is. Ireland is a small country whose broadcast media is dominated by RTE. These boys have clout.
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Ronaldo is the classic modern brat. He's a brat of a person. He's the modern player: he's got gifts, he's got no character, no resilience, he's flash, and he'll always do it against the little teams, but last Sunday when they needed him against Arsenal, he cost them the match. And he'll cost them a lot more matches and he'll give Ferguson a headache.
I'm waiting for the day a middle-aged woman turns up at the studio and asks Éamon whether he remembers what he got up to one particular drunken evening on holidays in Funchal in '84. I can't figure out whether he secretly knows or if it's an example of that dramatic irony thing our English teacher told us about at school.
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In September 2003, independent Irish station TV3 launched The Dunphy Show, a Friday night chat show hosted by Éamon Dunphy. It was scheduled in direct opposition to RTE's The Late Late Show, the nation's most popular programme for over four decades. The Dunphy Show was cancelled twelve editions into its thirty-show run. The Dunphy Show's theme tune was 'I Fought the Law' by the Clash.
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Excerpt from an Apres Match sketch, December 2000
Éamon Dunphy (Gary Cooke) tells us who he's really doing it for.
I'm standing up for the little guy - the little guy in the street who went to Shelbourne to a raffle to win a ticket to a cake-sale in Shamrock Rovers where he might win a little voucher which may go into a draw drum where he hopefully will win a ticket to go and see Home Farm versus Stella Maris on a dank Tuesday in Whitehall with eight other people. Bottle of coddle, loaf of Brennan's bread, the auld triangle - Dublin as it was...as in t-those days...(becomes incoherent and begins to sob)
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Excerpt from an Apres Match sketch, June 2000
Éamon and Liam Brady (Barry Murphy) are in rehearsals.
ÉAMON: Can I ask - why can't I be the clever guy for once? The sage? Why is it always Chippy? Why am I always the gimmick?
LIAM: Eh, Eamon - (gestures towards himself) Juventus, Sampdoria...(gestures towards Éamon)...Millwall...
(Beat)
ÉAMON: Yeah, sorry, I forgot...
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Beneath Dunphy's peacockery lies something else. His man-of-the-people shtick may be delusional or simply wishful thinking. But it may also be an example of his vulnerability and insecurity. When excoriating Giovanni Trapattoni for not selecting Andy Reid for the latest Ireland squad - Dunphy sees it as an act of "bullying" and "abuse", no less - it's notable how often he appealed to the ordinary fan who, Éamon was full sure, or was hoping, would agree with him.
In the studio, Dunphy will often defer to those of his colleagues with more footballing substance than he has (see in this clip how desperate he is for John Giles to back him up - "John, is it outrageous? It means more if you say it. They think I'm mad!"). One of the most interesting aspects of Dunphy is the tension between the times he recognises that someone else (usually Giles, often Graeme Souness of late) is able to speak about the game with greater authority than he can, and the times (much more frequently) he is utterly convinced that his opinion is correct.
Is Dunphy a breath of fresh air in the stale room of TV football punditry? Is he just a sporting version of the odious redtop columnist or local radio hack of whom the best one can say is "you may love him or hate him, but you certainly can't ignore him"? Both, perhaps? If he ever gets round to writing an autobiography, I may not buy it, but I'll borrow it from the library.
...we should pay our respects to the Daily Sport, which dispensed with the idea that 'news' should be true. (FOOTNOTE: A bit like the Daily Mail or Fox News, but more honest.) This innovation allowed it to come up with the most engaging pair of front pages in the history of journalism. In the first, it took a picture of the moon and superimposed a Second World War bomber on it, under the headline: 'WW2 Bomber Found On Moon'. Shortly afterwards, it simply published the picture of the moon, headlined 'WW2 Bomber Found On Moon Vanishes'.
The Irish media got a similar two-stories-for-the-price-of-none this week regarding Andy Reid. One day they were reporting on a supposed rift between Reid and Giovanni Trapattoni, the next they were reporting on its apparent non-existence. This speaks of two things. Firstly, the media here grows ever more keen to poke at a wound until it gets infected (of which more, I'm sure, at a later date). Secondly, it reflects the affection there is for Reid amongst many here and their longing to see him in the green jersey.
I'm mightily torn on this. I heart Andy Reid. He is my favourite current Irish player because he is so un-Irish. There has never been such a thing as a distinctly Irish style of football. We are firmly within the English sphere of influence and as such everyone grows up with the two straight lines of four and the big fella up front and all the other typically English facets, for good and for ill. Reid seems to have been born in the wrong place. The mere fact that he sees the game in three dimensions, beyond the linearity we are usually cursed with, makes him almost illicitly exciting. It's hardly bearable when the director cuts to the bench and we see Reid huddled up in his big FAI jacket. Letting his talent wither on the vine is something that we're going to end up regretting when we look back on this era.
Yet one can see why Trapattoni has not yet used him. He has a particular system in mind: a 4-4-2 with two tidy central midfielders, one a ball-winner, the other to be a reasonably accomplished ball-player (Steven Reid played in this role in the first two qualifiers); two wingers (versus Cyprus, Duff and McGeady) and two strikers. Steven Reid's absence from this game had many clamouring for Andy Reid to play in the centre. While this would add a spark of creativity to the position, Trapattoni's reasoning is that it is quite sufficient to have a pair of attacking wide men and just have the central duo go about their work quietly. The central midfielders are expected primarily to solemnly keep watch in front of the defence, and this is not Andy Reid's game. You could play Reid wide, but he is a poor defender.
He could be employed behind a lone striker in a 4-2-3-1, but then you'd have to drop Robbie Keane or Kevin Doyle.
It's a dilly of a pickle. For what it's worth, I'm erring - just - on the side of Trap's policy right now. This is despite the problems mentioned later on, and my Reid thang. It's a matter of the benefit of the doubt going to one of the most successful managers in history, and the desperation induced by successive inglorious failures since the last time we were at the big show. If I suddenly go missing around about November 2009, it'll be because I've embarked on a pilgrimage of repentance to some place dark and lonely.
More stuff about the game:
Damien Duff slinked his way through the Cypriot defence and dinked a sexually good chipped cross for Robbie Keane to head into an empty net, and went on to have a fine game. Welcome back, Duffer!
If I had a daughter I would insist she marry Kevin Doyle. He's as reliant and dependable as they come. His work ethic is a marvel - it doesn't matter how the game is going, how well or how badly he or the team are playing: he will never stop. And his efforts are not of the headless chicken variety, nor is it a case of someone throwing in a couple of wild slide-tackles to give the appearance of full commitment. It is more intelligent than that, and when allied to a mature mind and sold technical ability, it's no wonder there is more than one top-flight club angling for him.
If Doyle was already spoken for, I'd settle for being Richard Dunne's daddy-in-law. Christ, he's amazing when he's on top form. Whenever I see Dunne in an Ireland shirt, I think of an alternative universe in which Phil Babb decided that he wouldn't play Hutch to Mark Kennedy's Starsky and slide over the bonnet of a cop car in Dublin days before the World Cup qualifier against Holland in 2000, thus avoiding disciplinary action and keeping a young Richard Dunne on the bench. I think of Patrick Kluivert having a field day and of Kenny Cunningham's eyebrow furrowed in a mixture of anger and sadness. I shudder.
But - why is there always a but? - the fact that the best aspects of Ireland's game were the workrate of a centre-forward and a near-heroic centre-half's performance tell a story. Giovanni Trapattoni bowled the nation a googly by selecting Darron Gibson to replace Steven Reid in midfield, to play beside Glen Whelan. It, um, didn't really work. They neither provided the required cover for the defence nor gave anything when Ireland had possession. Trapattoni does not demand anything spectacular from the central two in the latter situation, but when the team would try to string some passes together, the lack of the ability - or will - of Gibson and Whelan to try anything vaguely positive forced the play deeeper and deeper until it ended up at the feet of Shay Given, with an aimless hoof the result. The second half was a hearty workout for the back line, punctuated by counter-attcks of varying degrees of success (luckily we had the attackers to make something decent of such scraps).
Frustration, thy name is Aiden McGeady. He possesses talent rare in an Irish player, but his footballing intelligence is questionable. One minute he is pulling a Garrincha, the next he is coughing up the ball after a mazy run because his head has been down the whole way and he has no idea of what's been happening around him. I'm going to sound like a patronising gobshite here, but he needs to get himself to the Premier League.
Cyprus were not at their best (they were scintillating against Italy last month) yet still deserved something from this one.
I love Paul McShane in a Philippe Senderos kind of way. His debut against the Czech Republic in 2006 was an example of the type of thing which gets me right in my dysfunctional heart: shutting down Jan Koller and not allowing him a single meaningful chance...except for the one which Koller turned into an equalising goal (it finished 1-1). Having McShane play, even at right-back, is a bit like Homer Simpson being in charge of safety at the nuclear plant. The enduring images from this game will include several of McShane on his arse, Ioannis Okkas having skedaddled past.
Éamon Dunphy is a bleating, know-nothing, blowhard, self-serving, egomaniacal, bufoonish hack. But then we knew that already.
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