TIPPING POINT:Trap's conservative instincts are likely to emerge on the run-up to the match; the real question is will his team obey, asks BRIAN O'CONNOR

ORDINARILY, and wearing a purely green hat, Ireland’s final game of Euro 2012 could be described as something of a dead-rubber, a term ripe for adolescent punning considering what some of our Fields Of Athenry merchants must have consigned to the Vistula, but one that can be safely ignored considering the very live relevance of what happens against Italy today.

Clearly the Italians, the Spanish and Croats have a keen interest in how Ireland perform. But for us, this will be more than about pride, or a last hurrah, or a tearful farewell to the “barmanka” in downtown Poznan.

It will be fascinating to see how Ireland play. Even with nothing concrete to play for the Irish players posses an innate honesty that ensured this was never going to be some pre-holiday stroll.

But on the back of that Spanish thrashing, and the consequent multitudinous headlines about Giovanni Trapattoni’s supposed ineptitude, inflexibility and apparent willingness to play the blame game, there is a quotient of feeling to this game that makes Trapattoni versus Italy a relatively minor sub-plot.

The manager needs a performance and when needs must, most people revert to type. So Trapattonni’s conservative instincts are likely to emerge on the run-up to the match. The real question is will his players obey.

For something so supposedly painful, everyone keeps harking back to that fateful night in Paris when Thierry Henry got away with what any Irish player would have done in the same circumstances and the Ireland team set a benchmark in terms of how well they can play when apparently let off the leash.

It is pretty well established that senior players in the Irish squad decided to buck the traces and follow their instincts against France, a move that resulted in a notably fluent performance, admittedly against a side containing all the joie de vivre of Clement Freud at a vegan dinner.

Maybe it was Henry’s handball and the resultant national dip into vats of self-indulgent woe, but the implications of that mute, yet eloquent, two fingers to the manager were largely overlooked, primarily because they haven’t emerged again since.

However, on the back of that Spanish rout, the embarrassment caused by it, and the manager’s reported comments about his players freezing, what odds about a similar defiance today?

And if it happens, where does that leave Trap? It’s a funny thing, being the boss. Wilde said all authority is bad, which is a snappy line but fails to acknowledge that someone ultimately has got to be in charge.

Anyone ever gainfully employed realises the tone of any organisation is set by the figure at the top. We know this to our cost in this country, dealing as we are with the legacy of those who spouted platitudes about leadership and provided none when it counted.

Teams are no different in the general sense, but with one crucial proviso: players really can vote with their feet, especially now that plenty of them can afford to go on solo-runs without stressing about paying the rent.

Up to now what Trapattoni has largely done is get those Irish feet to conform to a rigid system of risk management where they are largely happier without the ball than with.

On the back of the Spanish drubbing there has been much soul-searching about the inevitable limitations of such a football philosophy. And it is an essentially negative outlook, even though the role of any manager is to make the best of what he has and Trapattoni has obviously concluded the players at his disposal aren’t up to much.

Plenty disagree and it is remarkable how much better the likes of Séamus Coleman, Keith Fahey and James McCarthy get with every minute they don’t play. But these are the calls Trapattoni is paid to make. And everything hinges on those calls being obeyed.

So what happens to Trapattoni’s authority if they’re ignored, a la Paris? Certain things seem to come naturally in Ireland, some of them worth boasting about, like black beer, horses and hurling; others less so, like sectarian violence, child sex abuse and a less-than-restrained attitude towards getting blitzed.

But also lurking inside the national psyche is a deep-rooted antipathy towards instruction that co-exists in a permanent state of conflict with a Catholic devotion to following orders. If there’s a saving grace, it is that one prevents the other from overpowering the other, like a beery detente between anarchy and fascism.

And I reckon the Irish players might just be on the brink of kicking against the Milanese Duce. They really might. Getting stuffed by the Spanish is one thing: getting accused of not having a go is very different.

Some of the same senior players who did their own thing in Paris are reportedly on the brink of jacking in international football altogether. Will they want to go out with a regimented whimper, or with at least an attempt at some football swagger? After all, what have they got to lose?

The manager, of course, has plenty to lose, although not as much as the FAI, whose financial interest in keeping Trapattoni at the helm for World Cup qualification is a short-term priority with the potential for long-term damage.

Their authority, though, will survive. But there’s always another manager out there. And if the players decide to take matters into their own hands tonight, then Trapattoni’s authority is surely fatally compromised. For once it really will be about the style as much as the substance.

Michael Robinson will appreciate that. The former Irish international and now well-known media performer in Spain attracted more than a few headlines himself last week when coming out with some blunt observations about the deficiencies of Irish, and indeed British football generally, that provoked ire aplenty, but that now look more than a little prescient.

No doubt from his time in Madrid, Robinson knows media spats can be as bitchy as they are boring. Even so, the reaction of Messrs Dunphy and Brady on RTÉ was more than a bit queeny.

Dunphy felt it worthwhile reminding us that Robinson was no Pele when playing for Ireland, an observation steeped in the lazy presumption that only those who have played the game at the highest level are worthy of commenting on it, and one that might encourage the unkind to point out that Dunphy himself was no Mirandinha, the Brazilian pioneer to Newcastle in the 1980s.

Brady himself remarked that Robinson thought he was Pele, a rather snide reminder of the fluctuations in that fabled Irish team spirit, even back in the day.

But really, what did Robinson say that was so wrong? Spain are a joy to watch, and one of the all-time great international sides; Ireland don’t have the same quality players and play one-dimensional stuff; the same sort of football is played on these islands as 20 years ago; and Trapattoni has been alright, and no more than that, as Ireland manager.

Anything there worth getting the high-heels on over?

Nah.