Ireland: Perhaps it was the fear of injury or yellow cards. Perhaps they simply didn't care, or didn't care enough

Even still, Staunton will not be able to endure too many more nights like Wednesday. Ireland’s record home defeat of 5-0 by Spain in 1931 looked seriously in peril with the Dutch 4-0 up, and in total command, heading into the last quarter.

Those of us fortunate enough to witness the seemingly telepathic qualities of the Dutch when playing one-touch football at the end of their training session on Tuesday night were filled with a sense of foreboding about Ireland’s chances the following evening, though none of us could have guessed that the first Dutch workout would be the more strenuous of their two visits to Lansdowne Road.

They were a joy to watch the following evening. Ireland’s injury list was long but their response to Holland’s vastly superior technique and inventiveness was hugely disappointing and highly alarming. Till hell freezes over, or at least for the foreseeable future, Ireland will give the ball away cheaply against quality opposition.

Under successive managers, and Jack Charlton in particular, they have taken pride in their ability and willingness to win it back. Till Wednesday, that is. As Ireland’s midfield waved through continued Dutch attacks, it was impossible not to recall Roy Keane’s tackle on Marc Overmars, which set the tone when Holland visited Lansdowne Road in September 2001 and ended up buying Ireland their flights to the World Cup.

On Wednesday night Graham Kavanagh managed one decent tackle in the first half to lift the crowd but Steven Reid, Ireland’s midfield enforcer-in-chief, was anonymous. He never recovered properly from a bad challenge by Denny Landzaat after six minutes and was substituted at half-time.

What of the others? For the Premiership players, perhaps it was the fear of injury three days before the start of the new season. Perhaps they have picked up on the manager’s concerns about avoiding yellow cards. Perhaps they simply don’t care, or don’t care enough.

Staunton’s successful candidacy for the job was pitched on the need to restore passion to the Irish team after the apathy believed to have seeped in at the end of Brian Kerr’s tenure. It’s worth remembering that the FAI’s three-man headhunting team were so impressed by Staunton’s argument that they immediately cancelled interviews lined up with other candidates such as Frank Stapleton and John Aldridge and appointed Ireland’s only caps centurion without further ado.

Last week was a backs-to-the-wall challenge where Staunton’s claims faced their first stern examination. Faced with injuries to six important players on Tuesday, he implicitly acknowledged that a result would probably be beyond his team by stating that he was looking for nothing more than a “good performance” from his players. He didn’t get even that. Aiden McGeady was praised for his second- half performance down the right wing but he went missing for the entire first half, while Stephen Elliott was out of his depth when he dropped back to the right side of midfield. Stephen Carr has said that one of his main reasons for returning to the Ireland set-up was because he “missed the banter with the lads”. He again looked disconnected from the job at hand for the 45 minutes he spent on the pitch.

From an Irish point of view, perhaps even more worrying was the realisation that, of the six players missing, only Richard Dunne, and Damien Duff to a lesser extent, might have made a difference to the result and the nature of the performance. Paddy Kenny did all that could be asked of him in goal, while there would have been nothing in the game for Robbie Keane. Probably the best news of the week came from Manchester with Dunne’s assertion that he should be fit for the Germany game in Stuttgart on September 3. There was a desperate lack of leadership on the pitch on Wednesday night when heads dropped and senior players remained silent.

Dunne is the man to remedy that. Given the state of the team at present, Staunton should seriously consider following the lead of Stuart Pearce, who took the captain’s armband off Sylvain Distin and handed it to Dunne as a reward for the maturity shown by the player from Dublin on and off the pitch and the galvanising influence he has on his teammates.

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Staunton’s appointment of Keane as captain, brave decision though it was, has never chimed properly. One of the reasons behind it, that it would bring the best out of a player who’d been struggling with his international form, had a certain logic in the jaunty days before and after the Sweden friendly in March, but now it seems a luxury Ireland can’t afford. Proud and willing captain though he undoubtedly is, Keane cannot give the leadership on the field Ireland desperately need. As things stand, he will have enough difficulty sniffing out a half-chance against Germany. Let him shoulder his first duty without having to watch out for those behind him.

One school of thought says the captain’s role is not so important in the modern game. Nonsense. We can all speculate about the price England paid for persisting with the wrong captain for years longer than they should have. John Terry may not be to everybody’s liking but his leadership qualities are beyond question and Dunne promises to be a player in that mould. Such a decision would lead to one day of “Keane axed” headlines and would amount to an admission by Staunton of an error of judgment. Novice managers are expected to make some mistakes. Drastic measures are required now.

Staunton also needs to start persuading us that he is trying to shape events rather than just being buffeted by them as was the case during and after the game on Wednesday. Though he could never match the effortless elegance of Marco van Basten, Staunton cuts an impressive figure on the touchline.

On Wednesday, however, his body language deteriorated with the evening. After barking orders from the edge of the technical area for the first portion of the game he retreated further and further into the dugout as though helpless to contribute. The sight of him with his head in his hands on a couple of occasions sent the wrong signals. His post-match comments failed to raise the spirits.

He repeated his insistence that he is building for the World Cup in South Africa in 2010 but this piece of spin doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. “There is a four-year plan here,” he said.

“Make no bones about it, we would all love it to happen tomorrow, but there is a rebuilding process. We’ve got some good under- 21s, some good under-19s and 18s and, like you see with the squad tonight, they are all young men, and even some of the experienced ones are only 25/26. So it is a very young squad, we are building for the World Cup, but that’s not to say we won’t try our damnedest to get to the Euros.”

The average age of the Ireland team that started the game on Wednesday is 26 (a year older than Holland’s average); far from being in the first flush of youth, this team should be at its peak come 2008.

And the idea that there is an outstanding crop of youngsters coming through is wishful thinking. The Ireland Under-21s pulled off a brilliant victory over Greece in Athens in a Uefa Championship qualifier on Wednesday night, for which the players and Don Givens, the coach, deserve great credit, but we are still waiting to see the fruits of Irish youth teams that conquered Europe and some of the world’s best in the 1990s.

With his best players back from injury, this might be as good as it gets for Staunton and he should be planning on that basis alone.

Before Wednesday’s proceedings, Ireland players talked confidently of the need to go to Stuttgart and try to quieten the crowd by making a few chances early on. Afterwards the talk was of regrouping and trying to pick up the pieces. So shapeless were Ireland that it was difficult to tell what formation they were playing, but a return to a basic 4-4-2 formation is a prerequisite, with Steve Finnan playing on the right side of midfield, as in the 0-0 draw against France in Paris in the World Cup qualifier almost two years ago.

John O’Shea can be expected to revert to midfield, partnering Steven Reid as the holding midfield pair, though the Blackburn player is an injury doubt. Even though he is entirely unproven at this level, Kevin Doyle did enough to book his place alongside Robbie Keane up front, but there can be no place for McGeady in the starting line-up given the state of the team.

Shape and personnel aside, however, what is needed more than anything else is an enormous change in attitude. The German approach will suit Ireland better, but if the team stand back and admire the opposition the way they did on Wednesday the result could be as bad. In short, Ireland have to learn how to get mean again. If Staunton cannot at least manage that, then we have the wrong man for the job.

It came as some surprise to learn that the welter of publicity surrounding the team in the build-up to the game was needed to make such an attractive friendly a sell-out. Also surprising was the booing from a section of the crowd that accompanied the players off the pitch at half-time and after the final whistle. The success of the senior international side is vital to the stadium plans made by the FAI. More in the same vein as Wednesday and Ireland might finish their Euro 2008 campaign in Parnell rather than Croke Park. As the Archbishop himself might have once said, God bless us and save us.