LockerRoom: Yesterday one of the Sunday papers had harvested some survey figures on our views of non-nationals. No surprise really.

We're unwelcoming and we're self-interested and we're more than willing to entirely forget about the favours the rest of the world did for us down all those decades when we couldn't feed ourselves or employ ourselves.

All of which proves what Mick McCarthy probably realised a few years ago. Deep down we Irish are a very shallow people. It should be said that this column was among those who allowed a good relationship with Mick McCarthy to deteriorate into gruff barking and snarling over the Roy Keane affair. No doubt either that in the years in between positions haven't changed on either side of the argument.

What is interesting now, however, is how we have permitted somebody who was, three years ago this month, at the centre of every conversation at every table in the country to become virtually a non-person.

When Sunderland won the Championship on Saturday with a goal by Stephen Elliot, most of the conversations I was in on regarding the feat concerned the future of Elliot. Will Sunderland replace him for the Premiership? Would a year in the top flight make him the number-one contender to partner Robbie Keane in Germany, if, that is, Robbie Keane is in Germany next summer?

Mick McCarthy, whose achievement in this instance is considerable, possibly the most substantial of his career, is of no practical use to us as a nation in the foreseeable future. So we noted what he had done and we moved on, chuckling at the thought of him coming up against Roy Keane a few times a year.

It's strange, isn't it, how we can erase somebody from the landscape so quickly. No doubt McCarthy still has many personal friends over here and certainly he had close to a majority backing him at the time of L'Affaire Keano, but his banishment and the manner in which we turned on him suggest a more uncomfortable truth about ourselves: Irishness is a flexible concept.

Remember that distinct feeling of unease when it was reported (erroneously) that Roy Keane's farewell speech in Saipan had included a direct attack on McCarthy's claim to be Irish. McCarthy was dismissed, we were told, as an "English c***".

We didn't immediately question the veracity of that "quote" by pointing out that Keane is married to somebody who can claim about the same levels of Irishness as McCarthy or that Keane's children are all being raised in England. Instead we just shifted uneasily in our seats and wondered if somebody wouldn't replace the lid on that whole bloody can of worms. Quickly.

It was deemed that, in calling McCarthy's Irishness into question, Keane had gone too far. Perhaps whoever created the quote had intended to provoke that reaction, but soon we were crudely working out which players would have been offended and which players wouldn't - all such calculations and assessments hinging on the assumption that a certain accent was what defined you as Irish. Thus we imagined Gary Breen would have been appalled (English, see) but Gary Kelly would have shrugged his shoulders.

And that's how the "debate" went for a brief time. We moved on with the idiotic odyssey through controversy and celebrity and making a show of ourselves. We packed away the subject of Irishness for a while but our continued obsession with Roy and our hasty discarding of Mick says much about who we are. McCarthy and indeed Jack Charlton aren't bankable names in this country any more when it comes to advertising or endorsements. Charlton came with no claims to Irishness and we resented him all the way to Stuttgart in 1988 when Ray Houghton conferred Irishness on Charlton with a simple, looping header. After that Jack fished our waters and drank our stout and never had to put his hand in his pocket again.

McCarthy would have been just as Irish in his upbringing if he had been asked to play for England schoolboys when he was a kid. Circumstance brought him towards an Irish jersey though, and realising he was of use to us, we focused obsessively on his late father, Charlie McCarthy from Tallow in Waterford. Charlie had attempted to teach Mick to hurl. See.

The better you are and the more totems of Irishness you can produce the better it is. Clinton Morrison's auntie in Garristown trumps Jonathan Macken's more distant claims but they both lose out to Aiden McGeady, who by virtue of parentage and choice of employer is more Donegal than Daniel O'Donnell and Brian McEniff put together. Also he has a certain genius for which he gets bonus points of Irishness.

This column was born in England and extradited at the age of seven. He never felt comfortable at home in Ireland until he had acquired the camouflage of a flat Dublin accent and some rudimentary ability at hurling and football. He wasn't helped of course by having a teacher who would lift him from his chair by the ear and roar a reminder that "Ireland was a nation, when England was a pup".

All good, clean fun and we can't claim to have been at all damaged by any of it but the memory of it recurs from time when I find myself guiltily and subconsciously assessing the Irishness of certain soccer players. Kevin Kilbane told me once in an interview that Dev and the Sacred Heart had permanent places on the wall of the house he grew up in Preston. Neither hung from our walls at home but I couldn't help thinking Kevin would have been even more "Irish" if he had completed the trifecta and mentioned JFK.

Some part of me, I can't figure out why, remembers all these proofs of Irishness we wring from players. Andy Townsend had an aunt in Kerry. Phil Babb had relations in Carlow and his mother always fed him potatoes. Steve Finnan? Limerick. Kevin Kilbane? Mayo. Jason McAteer? Antrim. Tony Cascarino? Well, no trick questions, please.

And so on. This week as Sunderland hung in a happy limbo between automatic promotion and actually winning the Championship it was odd to hear how firmly attitudes had changed to the man who had once captained us in a World Cup and gleefully announced in College Green one heady night 15 years ago that Cameroon were two up on England. We couldn't have imagined anyone more Irish than Big Mick at that moment.

He outlived his usefulness to us as a self-centred little nation though. And chats I had about him this week lacked generosity. He doesn't speak to Irish media. Loyalty? Elliot wouldn't want to count on being there next year. Or Sean Thornton.

Look at his friend Jason McAteer, he got the boot. And Phil Babb. And Kevin Kilbane.

We move on and in a corner of our collective consciousness Big Mick, whose achievements are weighty and whose importance in our sporting history cannot be gainsaid, becomes a blurrier figure on the landscape. Now that it no longer suits us to, we don't think, "Mick McCarthy? Waterford." We think, "Mick McCarthy? Barnsley." When it no longer suits, our concept of Irishness shrinks to fit; it grows smaller and more crabby. The diaspora gets shoved back into the closet. The light in the window goes out.

That's just our own. Nothing new in the Sunday papers yesterday.