IT WAS A forgettable night for Irish football, but one which Aiden McGeady hasn’t really been allowed to forget.
As a young lad from Paisley, not much more than 10 miles west of Hampden Park, he was always going to come in for a particularly frank welcome when he lined out for Ireland against the country of his birth.
Not quite the prodigal son.
The headlines in the Scottish media in the days before the game left him in little doubt as to what to expect but prepared as he was, McGeady had never experienced anything like that level of vitriol.
“Probably it was worse for me because James McCarthy was injured as well, wasn’t it?” he says with a hint of a smile. “It was just basically me taking the brunt of the abuse.”
His Everton team-mate Steven Naismith took the opportunity for a dig or two when the moment presented itself and since then, there has been no shortage of reminders about that night in November and the impact it had on both countries’ chances of qualifying for Euro 2016.
Little wonder, then, that McGeady is determined to make amends when the sides meet again in the Aviva Stadium on a week from Saturday.
It’s a must-not-lose game, the winger says, before quickly upgrading that to must-win status when he realises that Scotland are already two points clear of Ireland after five games apiece.
“We want to get our own back on them from the last game,” he said in Malahide where he helped to launch the McDonald’s FAI Future Football 2015 programme yesterday.
We never played well enough to win the game. It would have been nice to have come away with a point but a bit of ball-watching and switching off at a set-piece has cost us a point. It could have been an important point.
When McGeady looks back on that 1-0 defeat — Ireland’s first competitive loss under Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane — he doesn’t see a huge gulf in class between the teams. Instead, the hosts just seemed to have a slight tactical edge that made all of the difference.
“They maybe not outwitted us, but they probably knew which way we were going to play, and their formation helped them to get the win, I think, the way that they played and the way that they had set out their team.
“I don’t think anyone in our team could give themselves pass marks from that game. In every other game that we have played in this campaign, you have got always got a few players who, regardless of if not the whole team is firing on all cylinders, you have got a few players who are going to do something out of the ordinary, show a bit of magic or someone get on the end of something. Just that night, we didn’t have it.
“I think both teams are very similar on paper, but that night Scotland probably just played better than us.”
The frustrating thing for him — and for the management as well, no doubt — is that this group of Irish players seems to promise so much more in training. When they convened on Monday, the only gloomy clouds hanging over Gannon Park were literal, rather than figurative, despite a disappointing end to the season for so many of the players.
Thursday’s closed-doors session against Northern Ireland and Sunday’s friendly against England will give some playing time to those most in need and set the tone for the week ahead.
“They way we play in training, you think, ‘If we just bring that into a game…,’ McGeady says. “It doesn’t always work like that, right enough.”
The irony of that, he adds, is that Ireland probably had their best spells against Scotland when they moved away from any attempts to control the game through possession to a more direct, less aesthetic, game.
“We only really came into it when we started probably going a bit more direct in the second half, maybe things bouncing for us, getting flick-ons and stuff.
But it’s all about which way you want to play, I suppose. If we get joy from that… That was obviously the problem under Trap, wasn’t it? Everyone didn’t like the way we played, but it kind of got us the results, didn’t it?
By the time the March qualifier against Poland came around, the context of McGeady’s season had changed entirely. The promise of a fresh club start at Everton, and his match-winning spark against Georgia, had been turned upside down by a knee injury.
He hadn’t played a first-team match in eight weeks but O’Neill showed his usual unwavering faith in a player he has known for more than 10 years. Even McGeady was surprised to start in the 1-1 draw in Dublin.
“I dont think I’ve had a season like this in football before where I’ve played so little and been out of action for so long,” he accepts, “but that’s football.”
He adds: “The manager maybe thought it was a risk he was willing to take if I could produce something but on the night, but I didn’t.
“Then obviously James [McClean] came on and produced a little bit and we had a bit of momentum in the last half an hour.
“The manager picks his team based on who we’re playing against and how he things training has gone but for me it would be good to play a bit of football in the next week and hopefully be in contention for the Scotland game.”
At least the club season ended on one minor positive. Sent on as a late sub against West Ham, it was McGeady’s cross that lead to Romelu Lukaku’s 90th-minute winner.
He expected to feature then on the final day of the season — on-loan winger Aaron Lennon was ineligible to play against parent club Spurs — but Martinez had different ideas.
Once upon a time, McGeady would have been the type of player to seek out the manager for an explanation. Now, he’s a bit more mellow.
“Once, he pulled me and told me his reasons why I was not playing and that was it.
“Obviously I am not going to disclose what we spoke about. He did not have to do that to be fair so it was good of him.
From that point on, that was when I started playing and saying, ‘Okay, if he wants me to do that, I’ll do that,’ and that was it.
He adds: “I probably think now that if you are going to speak to the manager, you are trying to convince the manager why you should be playing. He’s got his own ideas anyway and you are not going to change his mind by talking to him.
“When I was younger, I probably would have thought that I would say my bit anyway.”
That kind of maturity is just as evident when he’s asked about Jack Grealish’s will-he-or-won’t-he saga. As a player who followed a similar pathway — born outside of Ireland but progressed through the Irish underage system — McGeady says there are obviously differences between their respective situations but stops short of pitching in on a story he says he hasn’t been following that closely.
“It’s not for me to comment on. You’re probably going to try and make a headline out of something, of me saying something about Grealish, but I don’t know enough about it to be honest.”
– First published 06.00
