FAI Sends in the Clowns

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Irish Voice Sport

FAI Sends in the Clowns

April 16, 2008

By Cathal Dervan

SOMETIMES the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) make it too easy, far too easy. Sometimes Clinton Morrison just can’t help himself in his bid to become the new Jason McAteer of Irish football. Sometimes they oblige together and make a columnist’s life dead simple!

The week just gone was one such week in the life of the FAI buffoons in charge of the national team and the international game in this country, but before I put the boot into the Yes Men once again let’s look at the latest Clinton escapade.

On Saturday afternoon just gone Clinton scored once again for Crystal Palace as they maintained their push for promotion to the Premier League with a 2-0 win against relegated Scunthorpe.

The goal came just days after Morrison was named in the provisional 40 man Ireland squad for the training camp in Portugal and the games against Serbia and Colombia that will mark the start of the Giovanni Trapattoni era next month.

As you will know, Morrison hasn’t really featured in an Irish shirt since the humiliation in Cyprus last season that was the definitive low point of the Steve Staunton era, and he has missed international football, really missed it.

Thus the call-up from Team Trapattoni last week was a Godsend for the player, and the fact that he was told Trap was at Selhurst Park for the Scunthorpe game really set Clinton’s pulse racing before the match.

The goal, in front of his new manager as far as he was concerned, then followed, and our Clinton was as happy as the proverbial -– until the truth dawned hours later on the London-born Irishman.

I’ll let him explain what happened next in his own words. “When the gaffer Neil Warnock told me before kick-off that Mr. Trapattoni and Mr. Brady were here it made me nervous,” Morrison admitted after the win.

“It was the first time I have been nervous before a game so it was good to perform the way I did and get a goal. Hopefully I’ll be able to make the squad’s final 28. I thought my chance of getting back into the squad has gone as I was scoring goals and still not getting goals.

“You just have to keep on playing well and hope that you will get back in and, luckily for me, that has happened. I was never going to announce my retirement from international football. I always felt deep down that if I kept on playing well and scoring for Palace then there might be a chance.”

Then the penny dropped. It was in fact new Ireland assistant manager Marco Tardelli who sat alongside Brady at the London ground, not Trapattoni, who is contracted to Salzburg in Austria until the start of May.

“At least they saw me score and they can tell Mr. Trapattoni about it,” laughed Morrison.

The good news for Clinton is that he should make the plane to Portugal and will probably still be around when the World Cup kicks-off in Georgia next September.

One player who won’t be there is the Tottenham youngster Jamie O’Hara, the latest victim in a long line of FAI cock-ups after they told new assistant boss Liam Brady that the 21-year-old is qualified to play for the Republic when every dog in the street knows he isn’t thanks to England caps at under-17 level.

Inspired by FAI incompetence, Brady even went so far as to speak to O’Hara and his father and promised to set up a meeting with Trapattoni for the pair next month.

Brady also spoke to the media at length about the player, his qualifications and his desire to play for the land of his grandparents at his first official press conference on Tuesday of last week before the FAI backtracked furiously on Friday night and admitted that they had misled their assistant boss.

Trapattoni, as Brady also told us last week, is a stickler for detail and a man who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

So it is comforting to those of us who like to laugh at the FAI to know that they have already managed to score an own goal before the Italian has even landed in the country.

Trouble is, he had better get used to this sort of cock-up. It is the FAI that Signor Trapattoni is coming to work for, after all!

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