My Wish List for the New Year

Irish Voice Sport

My Wish List for the New Year

January 14, 2008

by Cathal Dervan

FIRST a warning. This is very definitely the last Happy New Year greeting I am going to issue, but seeing as this is the first column of 2008 it is only right and proper that I wish you all well for coming 12 months, even those with poisoned pens out in the Bronx.

The year is already a week old as I write with the rain pounding down on the window here in the Royal County, but at least it is raining.

Just before midnight on Friday there was enough snow in the front garden to build a snowman and stick a Meath hat on his head, which is exactly what the three kids did.

We’re not built for snow in this country. Barely had the deluge arrived than a truck ran into the side of the Arch Bar, my local here in Dunshaughlin, but I’m glad to report that no beer was damaged and not a drop spilt. The driver is fine as well, by the way.

Christmas was good. The kids all got what they wanted from Santa and his helpers, a budding table tennis champion is practicing on his new table downstairs, and yours truly picked up the Only Fools and Horses box set he’s been after for years. Lovely jubbly as Del Boy might say.

Work was fairly routine over the holidays, thanks for asking. We all indulged, even these pages, in the usual end of year reviews, the “how was it for you” sort of pieces that tend to populate the sports sections at this time of year, every year.

Round about now we start to think of real work again. Just the other day I applied for the tickets that will get me into the press boxes at the Stade de France and Twickenham when Ireland face Six Nations action in Paris and London in February and March respectively.

Already I am trying to work out the quickest way from Croke Park to Limerick on the first Saturday in February so that I can watch Eddie O’Sullivan’s team play Italy in their first game since the disastrous World Cup finals, and then get down south in time to watch Andy Lee fight in his hometown.

I’m also trying to work out just how I can get out to your part of the world in late February to see the great John Duddy take another step towards the world title fight that could be his by the end of 2008.

This is also the year when Padraig Harrington will defend his British Open title at Royal Birkdale just outside Liverpool in July, a date that may well necessitate a change of plan for the annual Dervan family campout in Portugal.

And this should be the year when we finally see a new Irish soccer manager appointed in succession to my old mate Stephen Staunton.

Not that I’m holding my breath or anything. After all, we are the first nation in history to draw up a long list for the job as opposed to a short list –- and it’s getting longer by the day.

The problem in all of this is that the obvious candidate for the job, one Terry Venables, who has been backed by everyone from Paul McGrath to Johnny Giles to Clinton Morrison to Lee Carsley, is getting fed up with the procedure.

El Tel has spoken to the Football Association of Ireland’s (FAI) three wise men selection committee, otherwise known as Messrs Givens, Howe and Houghton, once as far as I am aware, but that meeting was before Christmas and he is still waiting to hear back from them.

The three wise men are hamstrung by the procedure set in place by the FAI’s board of directors, a process set up to ensure no one can point a finger at chief executive John Delaney or any other blazer if this latest appointment goes belly up.

As a result we won’t have a manager in place when the fixtures meeting for the World Cup group takes places in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia next week. We may not even have a manager in situ by the time the FAI board meets again on January 22.

In the meantime, both the Bulgarian FA and QPR are sniffing around, ready to offer Venables a job as manager or director of football respectively if Tuesday papers are to be believed.

Tel wants the Ireland job — I know this from talking to him — but he cannot understand why the FAI are taking so long to decide if they want him which is a fair point.

Thus, with the New Year already over a week old, we are still waiting on the FAI to do something 13 weeks after they sacked Stan, which explains why the appointment of a new manager is the top of my 2008 wish list.

There are many other things I would like to see happen in 2008. I’d like Ireland to do well in the Six Nations and prove that the World Cup was a monumental hiccup.

I’d like Meath to win the All-Ireland, and Andy Lee and John Duddy to set up an All-Irish world title fight for 2009, and Bernard Dunne to get back in the ring.

I’d like Arsenal to win the Premiership, but they won’t. I’d love to see Stephen Ireland prove his worth in an Irish shirt once again.

I’d like Padraig Harrington to win the Masters, Rory McIlroy to play in the Ryder Cup and athlete David Gillick to win a gold medal at the Olympics.

More than anything, though, I would like to see a new Irish manager in place and soon.

That man should be Terry Venables, and if not El Tel then Mick McCarthy would fit the bill nicely.

I don’t care now so long as the FAI get their finger out and make an appointment soon before the Bulgarians beat them to the prize.

Happy New Year!

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