CONNECT: Nobody touched by this row comes out shining but Mick McCarthy emerges far better than Roy Keane or any of his backers
'After many years in which the world has afforded me many experiences, what I most surely know in the long run about morality and the obligations of men, I owe to sport," wrote Albert Camus in 1957. Camus's celebrated avowal was first published in the magazine, France Football. It was headlined: "What I Owe to Football".
Forty-five years on, morality and football (or, at any rate, morality and professional football) seldom play on the same pitch, never mind the same team. This week's departure of Mick McCarthy, generating massive media coverage - TV news bulletin leads, radio phone-ins, front page stories and acres of comment, even a tawdry Prime Time special - was telling.
The entire McCarthy/Keane affair has been debasing. It represents a football civil war. As such, it is a parody, albeit a largely inconsequential parody, of the political civil war that poisoned Irish politics and the moral civil war which raged over such divisive issues as contraception, divorce and abortion. It has, however, polluted Irish football and spoiled its fun.
It is, ultimately, all codology, of course. The murderous brother against brother nastiness of the political civil war and the generational strife of the moral version are infinitely weightier than the conflicts of the football brouhaha. Indeed, spats which have greater consequences for people occur every day. There has been a depressing lack of proportion about the entire affair.
Sure, it took place in an area of public fascination and consequently, it was always going to receive huge media attention.
Fair enough. The row, after all, polarised people in a safe way. Nobody was shot because of it nor was anybody forced to leave home. It simply provided a platform for vicarious clashes about personalities, management and meaning.
It meant the derided "chattering classes" could be extended from the confines of an allegedly smug élite to encompass a huge segment of the population. Most people had an opinion on the matter because football affords that. Still, it's hard not to conclude that we must be a frivolous society if such a row could generate so much fatuous media coverage.
As always in such circumstances, absurd things have been said. McCarthy has been blamed by the Keanites for the allegedly poor facilities in Saipan. Perhaps such matters were his responsibility. Who knows the details of the division of labour within the blustering FAI? Was McCarthy in charge of the team or of everything? Certainly, you don't hear people blaming Matt Busby for the Munich air crash that wiped out most of his brilliant young team.
Should he have insisted on a bigger plane or refused to fly in the conditions? Where does a football manager's remit begin and end? It appears to be a grey area conveniently invaded by both camps for their own purposes.
Symbolically, of course, Mick McCarthy was, for millions, a kind of general manager of Ireland, not merely the manager of the Republic of Ireland football team. For all his alleged faults, he will be difficult to follow. In competitive matches, his managerial record reads: played 40; won 19; drew 13; lost 8.
Transferred to a league, this would give him 70 points from 40 matches - an average of 1.75 points a match. In a Premiership season, for instance, this would amass (to the nearest point) 67 points. That wouldn't win the league but it would definitely get him a place in Europe and almost certainly in the top four that qualify for the Champions League.
So, his team has not quite done a Manchester United or an Arsenal, maybe not even a grinding Liverpool. It is more Chelsea, Leeds or Newcastle. For a small country, with, relatively, a tiny population and Gaelic games and rugby also strong, his achievement is commendable. The thicks who booed him at Lansdowne Road after losing to Switzerland - the sole loss in 18 competitive home matches - are a much greater disgrace than McCarthy.
It's true he probably couldn't bring the team any further anyway, not that Roy Keane helped. After all, six-and-a-half years is very long in international football management these days. But the booing thicks - most of whom couldn't manage a Subbuteo football team - have had their way. Bring on the next sacrificial victim and make our delusions of football grandeur as absurd as England's.
The FAI has behaved little better than the booing thicks. All blazers and committees and rules, they don't own Irish football anyway. Oh, they flog the flash end of it to Rupert Murdoch's Sky but the people who own Irish football are the youngsters who play it in the street, on waste ground and in local leagues. There, the morality of winning and losing, effort and luck and obligations to team-mates might be learned - not in the cynical, greedy and over-hyped professional game.
Still, there is a morality tale within the McCarthy/Keane affair. Whatever obligation the manager may have had to manage more wisely was indisputably outweighed by Keane's obligation to Ireland's supporters. McCarthy may or may not have been right in his handling of the matter - he was probably wrong - but Keane was certainly wrong in his reaction to events.
Timing is a gift in football and neither McCarthy nor Keane timed their exits well. The manager probably ought to have quit after the World Cup but the former captain certainly should not have walked out before the tournament began. Anyway, the bitterness will continue and who could blame McCarthy's supporters for privately hoping Ireland's slide continues? After all, if a Cameroon jersey could be worn as an anti-McCarthy emblem, any opposition jersey can now be worn as a pro-McCarthy one.
Nobody touched by this row comes out shining but Mick McCarthy emerges far better than Roy Keane or any of his backers - journalists, FAI hand-wringers and booing thicks - users who owe much to football but refuse to pay the price.