Comment: Tom Humphries on why the FAI finally got something right
So the FAI have done the one thing we thought them pathologically incapable of. The right thing. By choosing Brian Kerr from the uninspiring gallery of the inexperienced and the unemployed who comprised the official shortlist of putative successors to Mick McCarthy they have opted for the best manager, the most hard-working employee and the most charming man.
Fittingly for an organisation whose banal motto is "We care about Irish football", the FAI has also given validation to all those who work and chivvy on the domestic coalface. Everything from outside the Premiership proving grounds doesn't have to be counterfeit and worthless. We can have confidence in one of our own.
When Frank and Margaret Kerr came from Belfast many decades ago to make their home in Drimnagh to establish a family, a tailoring business and a familial speciality in coaching, first boxing and now soccer, they can scarcely have envisioned their boy entering stage left, stepping over the bodies after the greatest debacle in Irish soccer history.
The tale of the last year in Irish soccer would baffle and amuse most continental observers, unaccustomed as they are to the vaudeville tradition which underpins the game here. What might confuse them most, however, is why there was any danger of us not appointing the most cerebral and gifted of the coaches available to us. Why were we threatened with Bryan Robson?
The decision to employ Kerr is the correct one on all sorts of levels. Kerr was the best candidate with the most complete understanding of the game. This can be said not just in terms of his patient appreciation of all the nuances which underpin the internecine feud that is Irish soccer administration, but in terms of his understanding of the game as a whole, its history, its global coaching trends, its players and its future.
He is an outstanding coach. He has come through the ranks, and if that term is to mean anything in terms of incentive and the value of underage coaching it must have reward and trust at the end of it. And he is exceptionally good at dealing with people, even media people.
Why the decision was a tough one at all is hard to fathom. Kerr lacks the hubris of the bumptious Joe Kinnear, who declined to be interviewed for the post; he has a record of success which all the other candidates conspicuously lacked; he was uncompromised either by friendship, fanship or professional relationship with key players; he doesn't suffer from the flakiness which made men like Dalglish or Troussier look like very short-term solutions to what are long-term problems, and he has never had to call Terry Venables in to save his hide.
Perhaps the greatest gift which Kerr will bring to the Irish job is his imagination and his open mind. To have spent 25 years of adult life working in a university and living in the real world is a greater gift in dealing with superstar players than having been cloistered in soccer dressing-rooms since the onset of adolescence. Despite his modest playing achievements, Kerr knows more about soccer than most of the other candidates put together. And he certainly knows more about life.
He will be bright enough to know that his appointment necessarily puts an end to that part of Irish soccer culture which Jack Charlton so ruthlessly exploited. We won't be passionate, big-drinking party animals anymore.
Kerr's teams may occasionally talk blarney and play to the stereotype if it suits them, but they won't act that way.
Anyone who has spent some time with Kerr knows that beyond the disarming grin and the easy manner lies an addict's mind. No amount of preparation can ever satisfy him. I saw him once in Belfast march around a pitch in a public park on a wet morning again and again until he was sure he had paced out the precise dimensions of the Oval in Glenavon, where his underage team would be playing. At the same time, almost without thinking of it, he separated Ger Crossley (then the object of much attention for playing with the Republic) from the general herd of players and kept him away from the Northern media while smothering them in bonhomie himself.
The only argument presented against Kerr has been his lack of Premiership experience. Quite often this argument has been made by those sad old salts who have no other claim to an international management job than some distressingly sad Premiership experience. It is difficult to believe, however, that footballers who continually spout the old piety about there being nothing better than playing for one's country would be reluctant to expose themselves to just the one or two sessions with Kerr which it will take to make believers of them. Besides, the critical mass of this nascent team is Duff, Carr, O'Shea, Dunne, Keane (Robbie) and a handful of still emergent talents nurtured by Kerr.
ALSO, in Chris Hughton and Noel O'Reilly there exists the quality of lieutenantship which should bring imagination to the training ground and unity to the squad. Both are warm, attentive men, intuitive personalities and top level coaches. The end to the quibbling about credentials should end with Kerr himself. If it doesn't, it should end with his staff.
The other argument which will be used in questioning the new dispensation is an old and more complex one which we should be tired of by now. Roy Keane.
Since Saipan, Keane's dark, disapproving face hangs over everything in Irish soccer like a storm cloud.
It was said in recent weeks that because Keane was once a drinking buddy of Bryan Robson's and Kevin Moran's that either of that pair would have been the best choice for Irish manager. If true, this would be appalling. No single player can be allowed set themselves up as a checkpoint on the road to appointing a manager, and besides, even if integrity is not a word very much associated with what happened in Saipan last summer, an appointment made on the basis of Keane's friendships would have completely subverted the integrity of Keane's position, both personal and public.
If Saipan was about logistics and preparation, well then Roy Keane has won the battle and the war. Genesis has upheld his objections; in Brian Kerr he has found a manager who will be relentlessly precise in every aspect of preparation.
And if it wasn't about logistics and preparation, what was it about? A culture of cronyism? Drink? Personality clashes? Whatever lay at the heart of Keane's discontent, the arrival of either of his former drinking pals into the managerial seat was unlikely to solve his problem. At least in Kerr the Irish side has a manager with the wit to know that aspects of the team culture need overhaul and a man who has a Clintonian touch with personal relationships. If Keane felt excluded and ignored by Mick McCarthy, if he felt frustrated by the dogma of a manager who treated every player the same way, well then he might enjoy an era where the opposite applies.
The feeling is that Keane will either copperfasten his retirement from international football in the next few weeks or he will buy some time. Looking at a short-term schedule which includes difficult away journeys to Georgia and Albania at a time when Manchester United's Champions League schedule hots up is scarcely likely to have whetted the player's appetite for a return. Then there is the personal business of taking on the hype and the fervour which would attach itself to a second coming while also dealing with the busted network of personal relationships which are unhealed in the wake of Saipan. That's a lot to take on, especially late in a career which has been turbulent and wearing.
If Keane opts out he will lose out, too. In a public relations war Mick McCarthy was always going to riddle his own foot with holes. Kerr is as beloved, though, as Keane is. Beloved and blameless in what has already flowed under the bridge.
Keane will tread carefully and speak slowly on this one. He mused in Saipan last summer about ways of doing things in management, about different ways of coping with professional relationships in football. Alex Ferguson has one method which Keane admires and has absorbed. He conceded, though, that the hairdryer mightn't be the only implement available.
"People do it different ways. Some people need an arm put around them. Yeah, I'm sure there are other ways. I watch people who I respect and if you know football it's about the different needs of different players."
Perhaps Roy Keane will never give himself the chance to know it, but a few years of exposure to Kerr's methods would broaden his own education in football. Maybe the player has dug himself into a hole, but under the terms he outlines Brian Kerr is worthy of Roy Keane's respect.
He is worthy of being judged fairly and objectively regardless of whether he gets that respect. History suggests that Kerr will prevail regardless of the early storm he will have to endure. Back in December 1986 he took on a St Patrick's side who defended with the negative passion of Italians and launched attacks only on Bank Holidays or High Church holidays. When that team abandoned ship en bloc the following summer Kerr commented: "Most of them didn't fancy me because they didn't know me." He built a completely new side and lost out on the league by a single goal.
Most of the younger players in the flock he now inherits know him and worship him. The stars who will emerge in the next couple of years, players like Richie Ryan, Sean Thornton and Willo Flood, are Kerr's children also.
In one sense the Kerr era began on Friday amidst the bloodletting and media leaking that is a traditional part of FAI life. In another sense it began a long time ago when Kerr began producing teams which put an end to the tradition of loveable Irish losers. His dedication to that principle won all arguments in the past few weeks. It should win more than arguments in the coming years.
