TV VIEW: Souey fails to convince Giles 'n' Dunphy that if the other team has better players, you are, how you say, screwed
A MIDWEEK trawl through ESPN’s Classic channel yielded Sean Connery narrating Fifa’s official film of the 1982 World Cup in which Shhhhean’s native Shhhhcotland played a famous game against Brazil.
For those of us of a certain vintage there was a frisson of nostalgia at the old tape of David Narey rifling a screamer into the top corner of the Brazilian net and turning around to celebrate in virtual disbelief.
The first man to him was Graeme Souness, sporting his best “Yozzer” Hughes ’tache. Other fondly remembered names in Scottish shirts slipped into picture too.
Kenny Dalglish’s cheeks looked even redder in the Spanish heat. John Robertson cut in from the wing with the usual “wide load” sign pinned to his broad behind. Gordon Strachan looked pale. Alan Hansen was slim. They were all there, genuinely top, top players. And they ended up getting spanked harder than an Oireachtas member with a discount voucher for a knocking shop.
That Narey goal just made Brazil cross. Zico, Socrates, Eder and the rest went completely tonto and put four past Alan Rough in goal.
By the end, Souness’s ronnie had lost a lot of its brio.
Maybe that’s where Souey got to grips with the concept that even with good players, if the other side have even better players, then you are usually screwed. That pretty fundamental argument though is eschewed by John Giles and Eamon Dunphy in favour of a more metaphysical approach.
Pouring forth theories about “honesty of effort” and the ultra-poetic concept of “spirit” before Saturday night’s World Cup first leg play-off against France, the venerable duo’s argument eventually boiled down to a suspicion that the French weren’t up for it.
In fact throw a couple of Dad's Armyuniforms on them and it wouldn't have been a surprise to hear the Corporals Jones and Frazer of football punditry proclaim the Frogs don't like it up 'em.
Pre-match rumours of a nuclear fall-out between Thierry Henry and Raymond Domenech were pounced upon as evidence of mental fragility. The idea that a place in the World Cup finals might be worth briefly parking disagreements at the kerb didn’t feature on Dunphy’s radar at all.
He was at his most odiously smug on Saturday night. A pre-match clip from Brian Kerr, daring to put forward a theory different from Dunphy’s, one that suggested the French might actually pass the ball to one another despite their dislike of Monsieur Domenech, was treated with gratuitous ignorance.
“I don’t care what he says,” Dunphy, said contemptuously.
“But he has studied them (the French),” replied Bill O’Herlihy.
“I’ve studied them . . . I don’t know why Brian Kerr is listened to,” he sneered, before coming up with a line worthy of Pee Flynn at his bombastic best. “I live half the year in France.”
Souness had been delayed in getting to the studio and his arrival coincided with a welcome breath of fresh perspective. Equipped with a suitably Solomon-like beard, he forecasted: “The Irish have got to get into their faces. The problem is you can’t do that for 90 minutes.”
At half-time Souey drove Giles and Dunphy to distraction with the idea the French were playing within themselves. Probably not for the first time, it provoked a heated discussion about “gear” between two Dubliners and a man from Edinburgh.
“If Ireland score, France will show another gear,” Souey said, prompting Dunphy, no doubt drawing on his extensive knowledge of all things French, to respond with true Gallic vagueness: “They may have another gear, but you’ve got to put the key in.”
Anyway, as was blindingly obvious to those of us with a hopelessly two-eyed and inexpert attitude to watching football matches, the French did have another gear. Probably several others too, which spells little else but doom for us in Paris on Wednesday night.
But the screamingly straight-forward conclusion that the French are better than us couldn’t shift a semitone Giles and Dunphy’s mantra that Trapattoni's tactics are to blame.
“I disagree with Graeme. I don’t think they stepped up a gear. We stepped down,” Giles declared, prompting his pal to shockingly declare: “I agree with John!”
Dunphy threw in a few of the usual barbs – “bankruptcy of tactics, sterile system” – with a typical swooning elegy to the martyred Irish players before both once again began suckling at the wronged teat of Andy Reid.
More and more it is Souness, the self-confessed outsider, who is becoming the rational voice of RTÉ’s football coverage, making the others sound like curmudgeons, grumbling because they like the sound it makes.
“I realise I am sitting between two passionate Irishmen,” he soothed at one stage.
“I’m not passionate!” screeched Dunphy, bringing to an end an evening of stunning self-regard and a display of prediction that leaves no one in doubt as to why Deauville’s casinos are happy to host him for half the year.
Friday night’s rugby international between France and South Africa also illustrated the importance of language and tone.
“There’s a little undercurrent of physicality here,” Ryle Nugent proclaimed at the start of the second half.
“Physicality” is a phrase much-favoured by rugby commentators and is stabled in the anodyne quarter, along with “hard yards” and “gain-line.” Sitting next to Ryle, Frankie Sheahan was having none of it.
“If the ref doesn’t take charge, this is going to break out into a 30-man fight,” he bluntly declared.
Good man Frankie.
