Nov 25,2024
How stands the Heimir Republic as Ireland's 2024 programme draws to a close?
The mood was fairly upbeat in the away end urinals at half-time in Wembley last Sunday. The feeling among the jacks-going public was one of almost giddy satisfaction, fans wondering 'could it be... could it be one of those nights?'
Notwithstanding the tribal sensitivities, the game was already pretty low-stakes from an Irish perspective following our gratuitously lucky win over Finland the previous Thursday. A shot to nothing, as it were.
Ireland had succeeded in preventing any shots at anything in the first half at Wembley, reducing England to long passages of sterile and lateral possession play.
Nathan Collins had looked the part in the Paul McGrath 1990-91 sitting midfielder role. After the alarmingly open defensive display on Thursday, Ireland demonstrated a peak-Trap era solidity and vigilance in the opening 45 minutes.
Unfortunately, the evening took off in another direction entirely.
The sending off/penalty combo is a sickener at the best of times and Ireland certainly weren't in any fit state to weather what followed. Rarely has the gap between 'we're looking good here' and 'this could get ugly' been so short.
The second half was too much for several in the away end to endure and many were back in the warmth of the Arch Bar before the ref mercifully blew the final whistle, essentially - or so it seemed - after being asked by the players.
The home fans - aside from loudly booing Amhráin na bhFiann, which seems to be part of the accepted protocol at this point - came across more bourgeois and less Billy Bright-inclined than their travelling contingent.
They rained down paper aeroplanes on the Irish end from the upper deck, much less wounding than the planks of timber the politically motivated hardcore pegged down from the Upper West Stand in February '95.
They went through the rolodex of goading chants usually targeted at Scotland, substituting in the name of Ireland. In English heads, Scotland are perennially regarded as a sad-sack whipping boy, regardless of how good or bad they are at any given time. During the first half of the game in September, the England fans in the Havelock Square End belted out 'Are you Scotland in disguise?', which was surely one of the most complimentary assessments of the Irish team in some time.
There were fewer Irish fans around to goad, in any case. The FAI had sent back a couple of thousand tickets from the original away allocation. The public demand for seeing our boys pummelled into the dirt of Wembley by Harry Kane and his brave lions was fairly slack.
And so brought down the curtain on Heimir Hallgrimsson's first campaign in charge of the national team, one in which we've managed yet again to cling onto Nations League B status, for the time being anyway.
Republic of Ireland are truly the 1990s Southampton of League B, surviving in the second tier despite (a) finishing bottom in one (b) scoring one goal in six and winning no game in another and (c) losing to Armenia in the first match in another.
This time, a goal difference of -9 wasn't sufficient to relegate us to C. To fully ensure our survival for a fourth successive campaign, we have to get the better of Bulgaria over two legs, another faded veteran of the American summer of 1994 who recently let five past them in Belfast.
Heimir, with the kind of even-tempered frankness that has characterised his interviews, described the Bulgarian tie as "an okay draw. It's not my favourite, it's not the worst."
In the wake of Stephen Kenny's fervent evangelising, there's been a touch of the Ralf Rangnick about Heimir so far, that sense that he's coming in as much a managerial consultant as a manager.
While he has refrained from proposing open heart surgery, conscious that our insurance doesn't cover that at the present time, he has talked in more therapeutic terms about the urgent need to engender confidence in the team.
He advocated replenishing our stocks of bastardry, a quality with which we were once amply supplied. The 1-0 win in Cardiff in October 2017, which denied Wales a shot at World Cup qualification in their prime and gave us close-ups of weeping red-clad supporters in the stands, was Mourinhoesque in its villainy.
Republic of Ireland are truly the 1990s Southampton of League B, surviving in the second tier despite (a) finishing bottom in one (b) scoring one goal in six and winning no game in another and (c) losing to Armenia in the first match in another.
He arrived at a time when there was a danger of apathy setting in, which became particularly acute after the September window and hasn't entirely abated.
The Kenny regime had the effect of demonstrating that our primary problem was not, in fact, dinosaur managers. A large constituency of the Irish fanbase was not going to believe this was so unless explicitly shown otherwise. We did it the dreamers' way for a few years and wound up with six competitive wins in 28, the kind of win-loss ratio we hadn't seen since the early 1970s.
A chastened people, the official narrative was now that we were going 'back to basics', a phrase once associated with Howard Wilkinson, a man so suspicious of flair he chased Eric Cantona out of Elland Road after nine months.
There was no evading the big picture issues by now, namely Ireland's chronically under-resourced talent production system.
Set against that, arguments about selection calls and style of play felt almost beside the point. In the long term we may all be dead, but in the short term we were surely doomed.
Without even a futile culture war to keep fans engaged, there was a danger that people would tune out.
We'd heard Gus Poyet marvelling at the forbearance and loyalty of the Irish support amidst defeat after defeat, contrasting it pointedly with the snooty and demanding lot back in Greece. The word came back from those with knowledge of the Greek scene that they didn't have much faith in their national team's prospects (in 2023, at least) and were instead preoccupied with the fortunes of their various clubs teams - your Olympiakoses, your Panathanaikoses, your AEK Athenses.
With the League of Ireland traditionally pigeon-holed as a cult product, ignored by vast swathes of the public, the Irish team had assumed an outsized importance as a match-going outlet.
Perhaps - and whisper it quietly - times are changing.
After its most thrilling season for many a year, the dear old LOI is borderline mainstream at this point. We've witnessed Duffer, after a long career at the summit of the English game, emerge as the league's hype-man in chief, using the Shels programme notes to declare it "bigger, better, more exciting and more important" than the national team. You wouldn't want to hold Duff to everything that comes out of his mouth but this certainly chimed with a growing sentiment.
Things have a bit left to run on that front and Hallgrimsson himself was reported to be startled by both the interest in the national team and the size of the travelling contingent in Helsinki.
Against the Finns, Ireland had, like Trump, avenged a sickening loss in 2020 four years later, taking maximum points and securing third spot, one better than most had envisioned in September.
The outpouring of relief after the win in Finland was touching, with fans remembering what it felt like to win a competitive game worth talking about.
Kenny, meanwhile, is back pulling up trees with St Pat's and his defenders may well ask what much has changed. His fate was sealed by home and away losses to Greece and his successor has pulled off the same feat.
But 2024 wasn't without its green shoots, from the wins over Finland - one probably deserved, one definitely fortuitous - to the second half display in Athens to, hell, even the first half defensive showing in Wembley.
Caoimhín Kelleher has solidified his credentials as a potential goalkeeping great, Festy Ebosele has burst onto the scene, Troy Parrott and Adam Idah have both found some goal-scoring form - albeit in the Dutch and Scottish leagues - and Collins continues to grow as a leader.
Aside from early shows of aloofness, the manager's PR game has been impressiveness and his diagnosis of the issues encouragingly sound.
Come 2025, he will really have his feet under the desk and Ireland try and re-create the Road to America.
