REPUBLIC OF IRELAND V CYPRUS: Tom Humphriesrelives that fateful night in Nicosia when Cyprus humiliated Steve Staunton's side
IT WAS no blip. More part of a spiral. Perhaps it was a necessary mortification before purging could begin, but it was a memorable embarrassment, a scar only now healing.
When historians of the boys in green run their fingers over the back pages of the last few post-Saipan years they will be hard pressed to precisely pinpoint the lowest moment, but the shortlist of contending disasters will all be related to the reign of Steve Staunton.
That the Staunton era should have been made possible only by the knifing of two of Irish soccer's greatest servants was in itself as inauspicious as augury as one finds outside the pages of Macbeth, but in the months that followed there was plenty of lowlights to chose from.
It would require finely-calibrated instrumentation perhaps not yet perfected to distinguish between some of the embarrassments which followed. The awarding of an Irish senior cap to some lucky prize winner called Joe Lapira reduced the international side to the level of a Stan'll Fix It variety show. There was the dark comedy of the press conference where the Irish manager attempted to describe in necessarily vague terms the attributes of Caleb Folan. There was the farrago of San Marino. And of course there was Cyprus.
A win on Wednesday night in Croke Park will not give us a reading concerning any altitude gained by Irish soccer in this period of Italian influence, but it will tell us definitively whether or not we have freed our feet and ankles and our minds from the mire we got ourselves into so quickly with the misjudged appointment of Stephen Staunton.
It's two years now since we went to Nicosia and got tonked and it is a mark one supposes of the enduring and indefatigable optimism of the Irish sporting public that we have all but forgotten about that night and moved back to a time of happy-clap optimism.
This phenomenon of renewal has gripped us to the extent that when an Irish player says, as Richard Dunne did the other day, that "we have a score to settle with Cyprus", the very notion seems faintly ridiculous. Who apart from disgruntled Mediterranean neighbours have ever had a score to settle with Cyprus, a country whom we once beat 6-0 and thought nothing of it.
That result in Nicosia, a 5-2 reversal (the Cypriots had reached the five-goal mark only twice in their history, against Andorra and Kuwait who were playing football for an experiment or a bet), was a showcase humiliation which in some societies would require those who suffered it to run upon their own swords.
In the event there were plenty of swords on offer but no volunteers for impalement.
As a game certain images will linger even for those who have devoted many hours of therapy to trying to erase them. The visible deterioration of the Irish as the game progressed was like an experiment in time-lapse photography. Staunton had been appointed along with a sheaf of advertising bump that he was the man to motivate an Irish side who had apparently been stricken by a mass outbreak of crippling ennui.
The reality which had to be faced in the bloody aftermath was that Cyprus should have scored more. The game's best player on the night was Olympiakos striker Michalis Constantinou. He missed a couple of clear-cut chances as the Irish defence reduced itself to the status of laughing stock.
In the closing minutes there was a series of those hands-over-the-eyes moments. Yiasoumi skipped through and passed up a virtually certain goal in a vain effort to set up Constantinou for his hat-trick. It was that bad. Players who had in three previous campaigns only experienced wins over Andorra, San Marino and Malta were eschewing perfect chances in order to be nice to each other. Konstantinos Makrides made a mess of a close-range shot when it seemed it would be easier to score. Finally Constantinou again had a decent shot well saved by Paddy Kenny, allowing the goalie to finish the night with a single positive moment to reflect on.
Kenny was perhaps the worst casualty of Nicosia. He finished the night all shot through with holes. His previous outing had been against Holland when he had to pick the ball from the net four times no doubt telling himself that things couldn't be so bad if he got in against Cyprus.
Now 30 and available for international duty, he spoke to Alan Kelly early in the summer about a return but "has not heard ought". Kenny's epitaph may contain reference to Nicosia but the team that played on the fateful Saturday evening had more than enough experience and quality in it to have come home with a result. Observers could remember an inferior team going to the same pitch just a few years earlier and finding things quite difficult but being dragged to victory by the incessant barking and prompting of Roy Keane in one of his finest hours.
Two years ago when things went wrong there was no leadership on the field and Staunton's bench had seven players whose aggregate international experience amounted to seven caps.
When the wheels came off there were no obvious replacements. Kevin Kilbane had as poor a game as he had suffered since his hapless international debut against Iceland a decade previously. Andy O'Brien's Postman Pat impression included some comedy defending. Richard Dunne went into the game needing to mind his Ps and Qs as he was on a yellow card and was desperately needed for the game against the Czech's the following Wednesday. He came off after his second yellow leaving his side short-handed. Clinton Morrisson and Robbie Keane appeared to have signed a non-aggression pact with their hosts. Leadership, though, was noticeable by its absence in every department. Robbie Keane could do with being relieved of the captaincy so he can get on, unburdened by wider responsibilities, with the search for goals.
Damien Duff was there and on the night only Duff managed to turn in the sort of the work required of a senior international figure. His presence also highlighted the presence of one of the curiosities of the Staunton era. Alan O'Brien who won his fourth cap coming on as a sub that night. Staunton saw something in O'Brien which nobody else saw. The winger had blinding pace which he used with a Forrest Gump-like appreciation of tactics and space. He replaced Aiden McGeady that night in Nicosia and his international career ended in symmetry with his club career at Newcastle. Five first-team appearances for each which must be a record of some sort, there we were few enough starts in those five games as to make it just as easy to count O'Brien's Toon career in minutes.
Today O'Brien is a bit player with Hibernian in the Scottish Premier League. His phone doesn't ring much anymore. He was given a run against Cyprus in Nicosia despite having been out of the game with a groin injury for over a month. It was the third of his caps.
It was a time when very little about the Irish set-up was surprising but Alan O'Brien was special. He got news of his international call-up at an airport desk. And assume that somebody was having a joke at his expense. Perhaps they were.
The beauty of the O'Brien cameo was that there were Irish players hanging around Premier League first teams and championship teams who didn't even have to check the teletext on the day of squad announcements. Their name wouldn't be there. Stephen Hunt at Reading was a mature mid-20s player who at the time had over 150 appearances for Reading to his name. He never got a sniff.
Which brings us back to Duff. The difficulty for O'Brien was that he was a left winger but nowhere near good enough a left winger to dissuade Newcastle paying their customary silly money to take Duff to Tyneside.
Yet there he was in Nicosia that night, being whetted on the sideline and then being thrust in like a sharp new blade to carve something out for Ireland. You could almost hear chuckles of despair from the 2,000 assembled Irish in the stands.
And of course Stephen Ireland was there. Another chapter in his slender novella of an international career. As with the player himself, Ireland's start gave cause for optimism. The Irish actually led the game after just eight minutes.
Duff did a little necessary magic, issued a fine cross which turned into the path of Ireland. Bang! He fired home from close range.
Breath of relief. Andy O'Brien delivered an equaliser to Cyprus two minutes later when his fumblings set up Constantinou. By the 15th minute the Cypriots were ahead and Ireland were in the twilight zone.
Two years on and Cyprus come to Croke Park and no part of our calculations even factor in a defeat or a draw (which they achieved on their last visit). The Italian era of Irish soccer has been without fireworks so far but has been steadily and technically impressive. Preparation has been quiet, detailed and cerebral. Much like in the Kerr era.
A large cohort of the same Irish players clock in again on Wednesday night.
In Nicosia they fled quickly to avoid the shame of interrogation. They have purged, repented. Some have vanished, some are in exile. We move on.
