- guardian.co.uk, Sunday April 21 2002 14.55 BST
For two weeks a whole summer's ration of sunshine baked Dublin. And then... 'Nothing as sure as the rain,' the woman in the hotel gift shop had said that morning as she sold her umpteenth umbrella of the week. Nothing as sure except perhaps that Ireland would be home and hosed (literally) against the United States at Lansdowne Road that night.
For all that it mattered.
Last Wednesday's friendly international was not a serious contest but more accurately mirrored the relationship between America and football that, since USA 94, has lingered with all the conviction of one of Ally McBeal's infatuations. As Vincent Hogan wrote in reference to that tournament in the Irish Independent the morning after Wednesday's game: 'It was honouring a contract.'
They came, they saw, they conked out. Towards the end, players on both sides were turning slower than that bloke in the deep-sea diver's suit who took all week to 'run' the London Marathon. The Americans' coach, Bruce Arena (not an Australian sporting venue), has made the most of limited resources and even understands questions from a compatriot along the lines of: 'Is Clint Mathis in the bubble?'
One presumes this exists somewhere alongside 'the zone'.
He might have suspected, also, that they were here to make up the numbers, even if the money was handy. Bruce all but said the Germans were better than Ireland, with whom they share a group alongside Cameroon and Saudi Arabia. Arena's team lost 4-2 to them three weeks ago and the coach said of Germany: 'I think they are going to surprise people this summer.'
Seeing that Mick McCarthy has probably settled on the small and speedy option of Damien Duff and Robbie Keane as his strikers, Arena's observation: 'I'm not sure there are any teams more aggressive than Germany,' is significant. On Wednesday, McCarthy brought Duff off at half-time after Tony Sanneh and Eddie Pope had given him a proper going over. Nevertheless, Duff was sizzling in the wet and, had the referee been less lenient, the American defenders might both have fouled themselves out of the game.
As for McCarthy's view of the opposition, he replied after the 2-1 win, with no insult intended: 'I couldn't care less, to be honest. I was only interested in my team.'
For a start they are in different groups and it would take a miracle for them to collide in the World Cup. What you get at these fixtures is admission to glorified training sessions and, while the Ireland manager was happy enough to go through the routine of discussing the few salient points to emerge from what was otherwise a Busby Berkeley watershow, he was not going to dignify the occasion with superfluous analysis.
He knew, but did not quite say, that it was as meaningless in terms of preparing for the World Cup. Not quite inevitable, but hardly a surprise. And, had the atrocious conditions claimed a valuable Premiership limb or two, you can be sure the outcry would have been heard far beyond Dublin.
The United States were third in their qualifying group yet - at thirteenth in the Fifa world rankings - somehow ranked five places above the Republic, who have lost only once in 21 matches. With no disrespect, the US are no more than a handy side with a couple of very good players. And those Americans who are genuinely interested in their fortunes (150 followed them to Dublin) should be grateful for the daftness of Fifa's method of deciding who goes to the finals in Japan and South Korea.
All of which idiocy sailed serenely over McCarthy's head. He has matured into the ideal national team manager, especially so in relation to the Irish, whose mood he understands perfectly.
As Eamonn Dunphy, the scourge of the previous incumbent, observed the day before the match, McCarthy has been allowed to develop in the job because the nation has given him time and space. He started poorly and, as Dunphy says: 'He would have been sacked a long time ago if he were in charge of the England team.' But it is not just the impressive run of results that has made his job safe; it is the calmness he brings to the task. He combines humour and directness (leprechaun meets Tyke?) and gives the media what they want and little more.
He knows who he wants in his squad of 23, for instance, and awaits only the medical reports on a couple of key players before he gets down to the serious business of preparing for the tournament. At the top of his list of concerns is his captain, Roy Keane, whose hamstring twang while playing for Manchester United against Deportivo La Coruña in the Champions League quarter-final on 2 April briefly turned into the more serious injury of torn ligaments before reverting to the original diagnosis. We're all doctors now.
But McCarthy resolutely refuses to be drawn into the sort of speculation that, were it Sven-Göran Eriksson talking about David Beckham's foot, would hit the front page day after day. As it is, the hysteria passed quickly. Ireland's football team, like the country at large, are comfortable with themselves, not carried away by an excess of expectation.
Yet you could fairly argue that Keane is more pivotal to Ireland's cause than Beckham is to England. He is by some distance their most influential player, parked like an angry policeman in the middle of the pitch. Dunphy goes so far as to describe Keane as 'probably the best player in the world at the moment'.
This side, he says with some justification, is hardly as blessed with world-quality players as the teams at the disposal of Jack Charlton between 1986 and 1995. 'There is no comparison between this team and the side of 1990,' he says.
Dunphy's very public argument with Charlton about tactics and what he regarded as the Englishman's waste of good players has almost faded out of earshot, but it had a profound effect on the development of Irish football, and was all the more beneficial for that.
As he says, McCarthy's team 'is much more than the sum of its parts', which you could hardly say about some of Big Jack's teams. 'If you break [this team] down to individuals, you would wonder how on earth they were to compete. But they are playing football now. You could put that down to Roy Keane and the team ethic, also the contributions of Staunton and Quinn. Robbie Keane also is obviously very useful. 'They have an advantage in that expectations are lower than elsewhere too. Coming into the England team for instance can be an ordeal [for a young player]. Getting into the Ireland team is not like that.
'The level of expectancy, the media hype is totally different here. Just look at the way Keane and Beckham have been treated, both captains of their country, both playing for the same club side. The Prime Minister here is a football fanatic, a huge Manchester United fan too, but he has not asked questions in the House.
'This Ireland team is like a very good club side. And the very best club sides always punch above their weight, which Ireland have been doing.'
There are other factors contributing to the calm that attends Irish football. There are very few off-field scandals, for instance - which is not to say there are no shenanigans. It is just that the Irish have more a French attitude to what is sometimes erroneously called 'scandal' than an English outlook.
Dunphy, who is writing Roy Keane's biography, regularly meets McCarthy and some of the players at Dublin's classy night-spot, Lillie's, and says this is a side at ease with itself. They just don't get caught up in trouble.
What also impresses about Ireland is the way they have integrated the outsiders, once the cause of mirth, now welcome guests.
June is shaping up as a good month to be Irish. Not bad for some of the team either.
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