Dion Fanning: Ireland hope to escape the tyranny of the present

Greene had been flown to the game by the FAI in recognition of his contribution to Irish football or, perhaps, as compensation for all he had witnessed.

Greene was, of course, the commentator when Johnny Atyeo equalised in the final seconds of the game against England at Dalymount in 1957 denying Ireland a play-off for the World Cup..

The deep and profound despair in Greene’s voice at that moment captured the ongoing and relentless suffering of the Irish football man.

“Overtime…overtime…15 seconds overtime and a goal to England scored by Atyeo from Finney’s cross.” 

So when Greene spoke 31 years later of a people escaping from tyranny, he was not talking as some bar room republican but about the tyranny that Irish football had been subjected to for most of its existence.

This was a tyranny of defeat, where hope and hopelessness often combined to produce the same result. 

Greene would have sat and watched Ireland play England in 1988 and felt he knew what was coming next. He would have known that Ireland would eventually concede, probably in the most painful way possible. But instead the extraordinary happened at the start of a magical age.

In many ways, that tyranny has returned. Over the past five years, Ireland have won nine competitive games, four of them against Gibraltar. It has been as bleak a period in terms of results as any in Irish football although it does not tell the whole story.

Stephen Kenny hoped that vibes and an understanding of the bleakness that had gone before would help if results were poor.

They did for a while but the failures were too persistent and they dominated the debate when Kenny hoped his vision would be persuasive.

We know very little about how Ireland will play under Kenny’s successor Heimir Hallgrímsson at the Aviva today but we do know that vision has been sidelined.

In another life, it would be possible to imagine Hallgrímsson as a Icelandic industrialist, flying in to take over a struggling Irish company which may have over-reached. He speaks calmly and with self-control. There is no need for rhetoric or comforting words. We’re grown-ups so Heimir can give it to us straight.

Hallgrímsson is making no claims for what Ireland will do over the next two games, and if you were trying to sell tickets based on his rhetoric then the FAI would be struggling. Happily for the FAI, Hallgrímsson’s rhetoric is down the list of reasons to watch Ireland play England.

Yet there is also a contradiction in the approach of Hallgrímsson. He speaks about the need to deliver simple messages when he will only have six camps of only a week a year to deliver that message. Yet, he appears to have allowed John O’Shea and Paddy McCarthy to take the lead in the build up to these two matches.

“I’m here to observe,” he commented yesterday which was a curious statement from a manager appointed two months ago and who was given only a 17-month contract.

His appointment was framed as a recognition that Ireland needed to win matches to be relevant but he sometimes speaks as if he is working to a five-year plan.

Yet if he organises Ireland and produces some victories then none of this will matter. Then his calm and understated manner will be seen as an advantage. He was not talking Ireland down when he spoke of the difficulty of his first challenge, but realistically.

On Friday at the Aviva, the rivalry between England and Ireland was a natural talking point. Hallgrímsson pointed out the difference even in terms of preparation.

Ireland have been together for three days while England reached the European Championship final in June and, even with a new manager, they will have a familiarity Ireland lack.

Victory against England would be even more extraordinary today than it was in 1988. It was framed as a rivalry at Friday's press conference but that has never been less true.

International football has been protected from some of the worst excesses of the inequality that now plagues club football, but this is an instance where the chasm is real and profound.

England are one of the countries which has accelerated and industrialised player development. Ireland, to put it mildly, has not. These problems have been talked about repeatedly but they remain the only context in which to frame this game.

Ireland was dependent on England in football terms and the globalisation of the Premier League led to dwindling opportunities for Irish players.

In 1988, Ireland might have been dismissed by the English media before the game but they had more players in their starting line-up who were playing for the English league champions Liverpool than England had.

This is the stuff of fantasy today. At the pre-match press conference on Friday, Hallgrímsson spoke about how it would be nice to have more players who were playing at the same level as Seamus Coleman who was sitting beside him.

“A lot of them are at a similar level. To pick a starting 11 is not easy. It would be nice to have more players like Seamus who have been doing it at a high level for a long time.”

This may be Hallgrimsson’s version of Trapattoni’s “we have no creative”, a statement Trapattoni could make with some authority given his career achievements.

Hallgrimsson is saying something similar, but less brutally. It never takes long for those who view the Irish team dispassionately to see things as they really are, often very differently to how we do.

Kenny’s words were always more comforting as he spoke of how nothing really should hold us back, that we could dream big and believe that Ireland could play a style of football that was exciting and successful. Reality had the unfortunate habit of intruding repeatedly.

Now Ireland are dreaming small but maybe it will lead to greater rewards. Hallgrímsson was joint manager of Iceland when they beat Roy Hodgson’s England at the European Championship in 2016 but England’s progress since then illustrates how their football has developed.

“The individual skills are higher than [in] the last England team I faced.” 

England are beaten finalists in the last two European Championships. They have reached a World Cup semi-finalists and are overloaded with talent. It is no wonder, Ireland have to turn to emotion, to the stories of those who got away and how different it all could be.

When asked about the history, not just in football, but between the countries, Hallgrímsson said, “I have been briefed on those things.”

Some would wonder if it can be summed up in a briefing, but maybe it’s better that way. We can watch the Mick Byrne clip on repeat; we can consume the emotional videos and bang the table, but all it does is conceal the reality.

This isn’t a rivalry at the moment, but an encounter between two countries playing different versions of the same game.

It’s no wonder we take comfort in the past for all its messiness. There’s no uncertainty there. The uncertainty is in the future.

Breaking free of the tyranny of the present is Ireland’s greatest challenge.