We hadn't seen anything like it at Windsor Park in a long, long time. Half an hour after the final whistle last Saturday the jubilant supporters were still milling around the players' entrance at the back of the main stand chattering excitedly about the exciting international performance they had just been watching. The coach driver was waiting patiently as the players signed autographs, posed for photographs with ecstatic fans and gave impromptu radio and television interviews. The coming together of the players and their people was a touching sight.
The only problem was that the supporters, photographers and journalists were Turks celebrating a Euro 2000 win. Every now and then a Northern Ireland player would sneak out under the cover of the celebrating Turkish hordes but unsurprisingly, not one of them could muster the front to appear at the press conference which had just finished and offer some explanation for an international performance of such awfulness that Northern Ireland could soon be top of Luxembourg's list as they seek out confidence-boosting friendlies. The provision of flannel was left to Lawrie McMenemy, a year-and-a-half and one win in six competitive games into the job.
With the top button of his shirt undone and his tie loosened, the manager cut a rather hopeless figure as the television cameras whirred and the journos scribbled. What followed adopted a pathetically familiar pattern. McMenemy has become so adept at highlighting the deficiencies of his own players that he seems to have forgotten any pretensions he might have had to focussing on the positive things that they might bring to his beleaguered team.
Even by McMenemy's low standards last Saturday's press conference was an unconvincing and shallow performance. Do the visiting journalists hammering away on their lap-tops try to explain the words of The Sash to their curious public? How do they make cigarettes that strong? Is there a direct Turkish translation for "lumbering and hapless", as in "the lumbering and hapless Northern Ireland centre forward Iain Dowie?" Were they surprised to see a side of supposed international quality play with all the finesse and commitment of a Sunday morning pub team?
The banalities from the top table droned on. "This is a set-back for us." "I'm disappointed with the way we gave away the goals." "A goalscorer would be very useful." "This is part of a learning curve." But McMenemy saves the best until near the end. "Unfortunately, it's not like golf," he drones. "There's no handicap system so we can't get a goal start or anything like that." This is by far the most off-the-wall thing this Northern Ireland manager has ever said but it is one of those crazy non-sequiturs to which there is no logical response. McMenemy is a bluffer and from the day and hour he was appointed he has looked out of his depth. As time has gone on he has appeared to treat his lucrative contract from the Irish Football Association as some sort of well-deserved sinecure bestowed on him for all those years of fruitless service surfing on Graham Taylor's coat-tails.
McMenemy was appointed with the remit of restoring discipline. The continuing pique he displays in persistently overlooking Jim Magilton and Gerry Taggart is aimed squarely at pleasing his IFA overlords. The fact that the quality and level of performance during the McMenemy era have, if anything, deteriorated since the days of Hamilton seems to be regarded as incidental. And that is perhaps the biggest indictment of all.
HAMILTON had a house style that was centred around a friendly, open atmosphere and paid at least lip service to the concept of picking sides equipped to play attractive football. McMenemy's tenure, by contrast, has been a depressingly joyless experience.
Most alarmingly, McMenemy seems wholly ignorant of what it might mean for this place to have a football team that could perform with some dignity and honour.
Northern Ireland now have two games of that fruitless charade left. Tomorrow night they face Germany in Dortmund and McMenemy's best hope is that the hosts take pity on him and his players. After that it is Finland away.
Northern Ireland will not then have another competitive game until the autumn of next year and the start of the qualifiers for the next World Cup. Up until yesterday it was unthinkable that Lawrie McMenemy could still be in charge then. The fact that he is will be to the eternal discredit of the IFA and their failure to appreciate the bigger picture. As standards improve and expectations increase everywhere else, Northern Ireland football is in perilous danger of being left even further behind. Perhaps over the next few days the IFA might reflect on their decision to ask McMenemy to lead Northern Ireland in the qualifying campaign for the 2002 World Cup.
