COVID-19 should teach us that results and qualification donât matter. Life is all about the journey - the joyful moments and feelings of happiness, togetherness, solidarity, community, and even anguish and sadness too. Itâs also about how you react to setbacks.
Last night was a wonderful night for Ireland and Irish football overall and Kenny should rightly be rewarded with an extended contract on improved terms.
I canât go on Saturday, as my life partner is fucking off to Belfast on the piss and Iâve to mind the children. But I canât wait to cheer on the boys in green next Tuesday night.
@Ashman knows the craic here and good to see some other lads who follow soccer here domestically understand the complexities around the irish manager and the mediaâŚ
for other boys, just please stop watching the EPL claiming you are a âfanâ, follow Irish players in England/abroad watch those teams and pay very close attention the the likes of Stephen Bradley and Stephen O Donnell , what they do and say because this is the future of Irish football management and is where the association will go i believe in the future.
actually as an aside, Jamie Mcgrath , Pats and NUIM academy, business degree , Dundalk, Europa League, SPL and now full international⌠thatâs not getting much credit this morning but that is the future
Follow guys like Scales, Elbouzedi at AIK Solna , Dawson Devoy and Mandroiu- these are the boys who are coming thru
ok on the media
you have x2 âcampsâ
the LOI camp, Dan MacD, Johnny Ward, Emmett Malone, the lads in the Mirror - these fellas traipse around the LOI, follow clubs in the Summer qualifiers and the NT, they have a great relationship with kenny that was copperfastened during dundalkâs 2016 Europa League run , Kenny clearly was in charge of to me what is one of this countryâs greatest ever sporting achievements and gave the press very wide access , as much as before the Maccabi Tel Aviv game in Israel he actually brought them all into the hotel and had a coffee and a full chat.
These hacks used to get pissed offf with the likes of the Az manager calling Dundalk a " British style" team and kenny played them all onsideâŚ
This was now in direct competition with what was happening with Martin O Neill at the time and the steady deterioration of his relationship with the media post Euro 2016⌠the boyos were completely snubbed at a function in Dublin, pressers with Mon and Roy were factitious, the football was awful and the Delaney thing they got their teeth into
Now - IMHO when Kenny came on board, they were not objective in their reporting and there were occasions where he was not questioned- i detected a change of tone tho with Danâs piece in Wednesdayâs Indo hinting of last chance saloon stuff⌠Kenny is a LOI man, he is one of these lads own and they will not i feel objectively criticize him as they know him too well as a colleague almost
now camp 2) the Irish EPL journo, columnist , critic, podcast host - Tommy Conlon, Ken Earley, the OTB crew at times depending which way the wind blows, ex Irish EPL players like Richard Dunne, to an extent Keane and few more- âMiguelâ at times
This is Irish EPL fan fodder, recent articles on the irish team are dismissive, offer absolutly no solutions aside from the fact we need better players ( wow) and continually compare us to previous squads citing the deficencies of the current side almost as if it is their fault for not playing at Man yoo or liverpool. Some of these guys âmiguelâ aside and the ex pros obviuosuly have a very very poor knowledge of football , are absoluty blind to the domestic game and just provide smug criticism⌠Kenny has yet to turn these fellas, loose v axerbaijan and they will come in hard
On balance Kenny did well with what he had at his disposal last night but still mistakes with the subs bench. He had quite a good night but he needed to have a perfect night and quite good wasnât good enough to take a point against Portugal.
Weâre carrying slightly too many players who just arenât international standard - Connolly, McClean, Hendrick. Until we get rid of most if not all of them weâll do nothing I fear.
We probably underachieved a little bit when we had prime Robbie Keane scoring 1 in 2 and Kevin Doyle contributing a few as well. We languished in some lowly enough rankings between 30th and 40th for a few years and generally peaked around 20th in the world.
