LOCKER ROOM:RTÉ's proven panel are fit and rarin' to go and England, as usual, look ready to give them plenty of material for analysis
WHAT WITH doing the impossibly glamourous job of reporting from World Cups, this column rarely gets to see the RTÉ panel in action. So Saturday evening was a rare pleasure. A night in with the boys. Fifa should be advised that the way to make the live experience better would be to have Bill and the three chaps perform live at half-time and full-time at all World Cup venues.
Over on ITV there was smoothness the size of an oil slick as the station got behind their boys in the Engerland shirts and their investment in those boys. In that vaguely condescending way which RTÉ brings to matters GAA they gave us lots of lightweight atmosphere pieces and analysis so bland it left no taste.
It was hard to take being away even for a few minutes from the salty cantankerousness of Giles, Dunphy and Souness. The rigour of their analysis makes the remote control redundant.
It's hard to know how much the boys earn, enough for a fake tan perhaps but not enough for a sun holiday, but no RTÉ money has been wasted on frippery like an eye-catching set. The lads convene in what I suspect is the original set from Murphy's Micro Quiz-M(although the Sports Editor estimates that the backside of St Bunny Carr may have rested on some of the seats in the halcyon days of Quicksilver) and just get on with the job.
“Don’t interrupt me,” says Eamon several times when nobody has made the slightest attempt to interrupt him. Good to see that the environment has caused him to brace for tackles even when they don’t come. In fact it is reassuring, the whole thing.
ITV’s set looked lovely, all shining and buffed like their panel, but the thought of England going down the swanee and the good people of Blighty going back about their daily business rather than watching TV for a month was clearly causing panic in the advertising department so they went with the a slightly ludicrous good performance/let’s wait and see verdict. The Sunday tabloids went a different way. Who says watching England suffer isn’t fun?
Over in Montrose it was all a lot meatier. It’s refreshing to have a panel whose default setting is grumpy but smart. For instance, lots of us parrot the received wisdom about the perils of playing Lampard and Gerrard together in midfield and the sight of Gerrard scoring after four minutes softened our coughs. Yet Johnny Giles’s devastatingly astute piece of end-of-match video analysis, circling the two boys as their colleagues looked for them to take a pass, allowed us to rest our case. Look at that! See!
And the lads, in keeping with Leaving Cert season, raise their points and leave us much to discuss. Good football or effective football? Johnny gave Graeme a polite slapdown there (“I’m surprised at you Graeme”). As for Johann Cruyff’s point about the troubles of an English team with an Italian manager, it wasn’t quite dealt with by citing Ancelotti at Chelsea given Chelsea’s team is predominantly non-English. Capello must deal with the sturdy and programmed products of the English coaching system, be they as brilliant as Rooney or as slow as Carragher and Terry.
You take your chances with an arranged marriage like that. Capello has looked at the Premier League season and decided Heskey and Crouch are better options then Defoe in the context of the English game. The attraction of Capello (and Trapattoni) is they have the wisdom or pragmatism to fashion their outfit according to the cloth they have. The result may be workmanlike but that is what they were given to work with. You don’t make an Italian suit out of Burlap.
The obvious tabloid scapegoat is poor Robert Green and, fun though the overall fat man on a banana skin effect was, it was hard not to feel sympathy for the goalkeeper. You imagine a career which starts in childhood and which must feel like a series of successes. School teams. Local clubs. Trials. Apprenticeships. Finally the Premier League. A family, aunties, uncles, cousins sending the good luck and congratulation cards. Parents dropping their son’s name into conversations. Yes, that Robert Green.
And then the thought of them all gathered, two groups perhaps, one in the stadium in South Africa, another in a house or pub at home in England ready to cheer their boy on. And it happens. An easy ball but one where there is a little bit too much time to think. An unfamiliar football. Feet and hands slightly off angle. That dreadful feeling of choke-induced error. The ball creeping over the line. Every eye in the world looking at you. Replay after replay. And knowing that it is for this you will be remembered, when your grandchildren look up the dusty old records (well, when they download them) it is this moment which will define your career. He deserves better then the stockade to which he is now consigned. It was a grievous error to be sure but England’s failure to add anything to their early opening goal is just as serious a failure.
This was an American side which didn’t look great even by the modest standards of recent sides they have sent to the World Cup but Altidore turned and burned Carragher when he wanted to and in the matter of needlessly turning over ball they must have broken even or better with the English.
One imagines that England even in crisis (over the last week, and for the first time, Capello has shown signs of being driven to madness through the strain) should be able to cope with Algeria and Slovenia. Which makes them all the more enjoyable to watch.
As the hype balloon is patched and hoisted again, who will play in goal? Joe Hart, a virtual kid and David James, old enough to be an RTÉ panellist. Or Green, cracked but not broken. Gareth Barry? Will his return cure all ills. Whither Heskey and Crouch? When we go to World Cups our fault is that we never expect to win. We are happy to be there. England’s flaw is that they expect too much of themselves, placing to much pressure on themselves and then disintegrating spectacularly.
Wouldn’t be the same without them!
