|
Howard left sick as a parrot by irish failure
 Top
Irish sportswriter PAUL HOWARD tells Martin Doyle why his love affair
with Irish sport turned sour and argues that the Irish soccer team will
get the manager they deserve (the wrong one) again.
“It was soccer that broke my heart; that made me not want to be
a sportswriter any more.”
Paul Howard got his first job in journalism the year Ireland under Jack
Charlton played in their first tournament finals, appropriately enough
in a country that doesn’t exist any more — West Germany.
His early years in the profession had a rosy glow, success on the pitch
reflected in a camaraderie off it between players and reporters on first-name
terms.
He admits in a way it wasn’t the healthiest of relationships —
it’s hard to slag an interviewee off if they’ve had you round
their house for dinner and dropped you off at the airport afterwards —
but says it was a lot healthier than today’s dysfunctional mutual
animosity where a Dublin-based reporter will be offered by a player’s
agent 10 minutes of the footballer’s time in London.
The past is truly another country.
Howard, who quit the Sunday Tribune this year after almost 20 years with
the group, has written several successful sports books (The Gaffers about
Saipan and Celtic Warrior, Steve Collins’ ghosted autobiography)
but he owes his escape route from the rat-race to a fictional character
who has come to define for many the worst excesses of the Celtic Tiger,
Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.
This swaggering, arrogant, womanising ex-Leinster Senior Cup-winning rugger-bugger
who first appeared in a Sunday Tribune column has spawned seven books,
selling 400,000 copies in total and a stage play which has just enjoyed
a sold-out run in Dublin.
Howard was born in Hackney and grew up in Stoke Newington and Luton until
he was eight when Margaret Thatcher’s election so annoyed his father
that the family upped sticks and returned home to Shankill, south Co.
Dublin. If his dad didn’t like Thatcher, though, his new classmates
liked kids with English accents even less. The prejudice and bullying
he experienced as a child meant Irish nationalism leaves him cold.
“There was huge anti-English sentiment at the time which is why
when I hear people talk about anti-Irishness in England I have another
story to tell. Irish people are no different. There was pure hatred of
English people — we all felt the sharp end of it.
“I’m not nationalisatic. Irishness is an abstract. I don’t
feel anything on St. Patrick’s Day or when I hear the national anthem,
it’s a war song that has no connection with my life.
“I don’t go weak at the knees when I see an Irish team in
competition. I’d rather watch England not because I feel English
but they’re just so much more fun to follow. It always makes a tournament
more interesting when England are there. There’s always a circus,
a soap opera — the manager is having a breakdown, the players are
underperforming, the fans are tearing up the town and then they always
lose on penalties — it’s really entertaining.”
Socer was always Howard’s sport. In 1982 when Ireland won the Triple
Crown at rugby it meant nothing to him, he didn’t watch a single
match.
“Yet Northern Ireland were playing in the World Cup that summer
and I was mad about them. I was glued to it, Mal Donaghy, Billy Hamilton,
Gerry Armstrong and Norman Whiteside.”
Sportswriters have often been accused of being merely fans with typewriters,
camp followers who get too close to their subject to be impartial. Today,
however, they are very much outside the tent particularly when it comes
to the Irish national rugby and football teams. As another cliché
goes, you should never meet your heroes.
“In 1996 it was a completely different world,” says Howard.
“We stayed in the same hotel, the players all knew us by name. If
you wanted to interview Andy Townsend you didn’t do it leaning up
against the wall of the training ground which is what happens now. He
took you to his house and made you lunch, dropped you to the airport in
the evening.
“What has happened, and this was entirely driven by PR people, is
all sportsmen have come to look at the press as enemies. In America part
of athlete’s education is learning how to deal with the media. They’re
really comfortable with it, will look you in the eye and answer all your
questions.
“Here we have media liaison officers, they’re media obstruction
officers. I remember one of the days I didn’t want to be a sportswriter
anymore. I wanted to interview Ronan O’Gara before a big England
game. But I don’t meet Ronan O’Gara, I sit in a circle around
him with eight other journos. One was from PA so any quotes will be on
the wire in an hour. He answered maybe one question from each of us, you
go back and write 1,500 words which is advertised as an interview with
Ronan O’Gara but you haven’t met Ronan O’Gara. I felt
you’re lying to the public.”
Howard quite liked the rugby players and particularly enjoyed interviewing
athletes and people from minor sports who did few interviews and so invested
more of themselves into the encounter, said something honest about their
lives. As for soccer players…
“A lot of soccer players I met would never be heroes in a million
years, they’re not nice people. They live closeted lives in big
mansions in stockbroker belts with plasma TVs on every wall playing Sky
Sports News. That’s their world, they don’t connect with the
public, never mind the media. If they want to move house they don’t
ring a removals firm, they ring their agent.
“There are a lot of players who if you got 10 hours with them you
would get as much as if you had 10 minutes because they’re not prepared
to give you anything. They could be spies for their country. At the same
time I don’t blame them because if Damien Duff did an interview
with the Tribune in which he said something innocent like I went on holiday
to Italy and didn’t really like it, the back page of the Sun tomorrow
will be I hate the Italians, with a picture mocked up of him spitting
pasta out.”
Howard was disgusted by Robbie Keane’s performance on the Late Late
Show when the Irish team captain claimed some players were so fed up with
media criticism that they were questioning their international future.
Howard claims that it is the height of hypocrisy for players to attack
the media when they know full well that the media have refrained from
publicising many unflattering incidents involving players.
“Robbie Keane really believes Staunton was sacked because Paul Hyland
in the Herald didn’t like him, that the only reason people booed
after just escaping with a draw at home to Cyprus is because they knew
what Paul Lennon was going to write in the Star the next day.
“The players got the manager they wanted. Most of these guys are
so stupid. If you asked them who would they prefer, Arsene Wenger or Bryan
Robson they’d say Robson because he did it as a player. Despite
what Wenger has won at Arsenal — who did he play for, where are
his medals?
“So if you asked the players who they wanted, which I believe the
FAI did after they got rid of Brian Kerr, they would have said someone
who played the game, someone we respect, someone who will let us go on
the piss on the Sunday before a match, who will bring back Mick and Tony
Hickey, who won’t make us watch DVDs to study the other teams. Steve
Staunton was the prototype of the perfect manager in their eyes. They
chose him, the FAI gave them what they wanted.”
It is no surprise then that Howard reckons Terry Venables is the players’
choice for the vacancy.
“They’ll go for Venables because he means something to them
but there’s no evidence Venables has been a good manager in the
last 10-11 years. He got to the semi-finals in Euro ’96 when England
played exceptionally well for two-and-a-half games and he deserved credit
for getting Gasgoigne in the right headspace to play like he did but he
got very lucky with players he had coming through. Two years earlier Graham
Taylor had Andy Sinton, Gordon Cowans and Carlton Palmer playing for him.
“I think Ireland would be much better off going for a younger manager,
someone like Paul Jewell.”
“I think instead of appointing Kerr they should have appointed Gus
Hiddink or Philippe Troussier with Kerr as No. 2 that way they could have
played good cop, bad cop. Troussier could be just a carpet bagger who’s
there for the payday and Kerr could be the sympathetic assistant who will
have the job in four years time.”
Howard dismisses the notion that McCarthy might come back.
“I think he is too scarred to want to come back. I don’t think
it would be a good idea. It’s only three years since they were booing
McCarthy at Lansdowne Road.”
In any case, are the players good enough?
“I think Ireland’s got something like 10-11 Premiership regulars.
While I don’t think there’s any world-class players, Given
is an exceptionally good goalkeeper. Finnan has played in two Champions
League finals and is one of the best full-backs in the Premiership. Dunne
is an outstanding defender, one of five best defenders who ever played
for Ireland. O’Shea and Kilbane have huge experience, then there’s
Duff, Ireland, Doyle; I mean we’re not the Faroe Islands.
“Greece have no world-class players but they romped home in their
group this time and they won the European Championship last time. There
was no huge stampede afterwards to buy those players because clubs recognised
them for what they were — just a really well-drilled, organised
set of players. Denmark were the same in ’92.”
Ireland’s real sporting problem (apart from the insidious pull of
computer games) is that the pool of talent is drained off in so many different
directions.
“If Ireland was like New Zealand,” says Howard, “where
they only play one sport we’d beat the All Blacks but here when
kids get to 14-15 they have to choose between rugby, soccer, hurling and
Gaelic football.
“Brian O’Driscoll would have made a superb Gaelic footballer.
He’s an exceptional five-a-side soccer player I’m told. Kieran
McGeeny would be a great rugby or soccer player. Damien Duff didn’t
play soccer seriously till he was 15, He was going to be a Gaelic footballer
and he played rugby as well on the wing.
“There’s a big battle for hearts and minds going on in Tallaght.
The GAA, the IRFU and the FAI have all put massive amounts of money into
Tallaght because they know that’s where the stars of tomorrow are
going to come from. At one stage there were four Premiership players from
Tallaght: Richard Dunne, Robbie Keane, Jason Gavin and Graham Barrett.”
As Ross O’Carroll-Kelly would say, Tallafornia here I come.
"I’m not nationalisatic. Irishness is an abstract. I don’t
feel anything on St. Patrick’s Day or when I hear the national anthem,
it’s a war song that has no connection with my life. I don’t
go weak at the knees when I see an Irish team in competition."
|
