Still John Giles and Eamon Dunphy make for an entertaining morning, especially when you think you've come to work.
The former Millwall midfielder does something of a routine about having been stopped in his tracks as he closed in on cap number 25 when his friend was appointed Republic of Ireland manager back in 1973.
Straight man Giles feels the need to provide a little bit of clarification . . . he selected Dunphy for his first game in charge only for the midfielder’s club manager to refuse him permission to travel.
Then he criticised the FAI for playing a friendly game in Chile, even though, the former manager insists, “he was the first one onto the plane” and was suspended by the association. “So I couldn’t have picked him although,” he adds with the pair of them chuckling by now, “I probably wouldn’t have anyway.”
Both men, who were out in Lucan yesterday to support John Devine's promotion of the South Dublin Football League's youth development programme, are more serious on the question of who should succeed Giovanni Trapattoni now that, as Dunphy puts it, the nation's "nightmare" is over.
Good replacement
And both seem agreed that Martin O'Neill would have been a good replacement although they differ on how far the association should go in their search for an alternative if the northerner really is out of the running, with Dunphy wary of another stranger to the Irish game "who comes in and insults our intelligence". Both, though, see Mick McCarthy as a perfectly viable Plan B.
“Martin was the obvious choice,” says Giles. “He was available and it appears to be Martin’s decision to wait. That is his prerogative. Everybody would like to have seen him in place for the two matches but it seems as if he is waiting to see if some club jobs will come up. I don’t think he is ruled out but the FAI are in a position where if they hang on for Martin and Martin is not in a position to say yes, then they have wasted four or five weeks.”
Devine feels that the lack of day-to-day training ground involvement might have deterred his old friend from their days at Norwich. McCarthy, however, seemed willing to walk away from that when he originally had a clause inserted in his contract, now expired, allowing him to leave Ipswich.
But Giles thinks McCarthy would be a good fit. “Mick would be good and while they say never go back if he did – it is 11 years since he was last here and there is a different group of players so it would be a different experience, a different environment and you would hope Mick is a better manager now too. He would be a good option but it depends on his contractual situation at Ipswich,”
Roy Keane he is less enthusiastic about at least in part, he says, because: “Roy’s last job was not a success and he has not worked since.” Noel King, he feels, will not be in the running but the association, he reckons, should have an open mind after that although, he observes, there is a certain amount that will always be down to luck with some jobs just suiting particular managers at a particular point in time.
“I remember Don Revie saying that to me when I went to West Brom that a lot depends on the club you go into. Even if they are not doing terribly well in terms of results – if the set-up is right – things can change.”
For the FAI, he says, the obvious dream pick “would be Del Bosque – because he has won loads of trophies – but would he be able to do that with the Irish team? You don’t know.”
Dunphy, somewhat predictably, is less circumspect. McCarthy seems to get his vote on the basis that he "ticks all the right boxes". First, though, there is the question of O'Neill to be dealt with which he does rather decisively: "If he's acting the maggot and he doesn't really want the job ultimately we have to go elsewhere. He's not the only fish in the sea."
n Noel King has added Crystal Palace defender Damien Delaney to his preliminary squad for the World Cup qualifiers against Germany and Kazakhstan.
