A new era looms, O'Shea focused on the here and now
Both John O’Shea and Marc Canham are partial to a morning jog but the momentum around the Irish team will only accelerate to a sprint following this double-header.
The commonality between matches under caretaker control is they’re all soon forgotten.
Who can recall that 2002 cracker in Athens, a scoreless draw against Greece?
Four goals came in Don Givens’ second game, all of five years later, but the 2-2 dead rubber in Wales was similarly drab.
Not even the visit of Brazil in February 2008 for a 1-0 defeat at Croke Park could detract from the real business of Giovanni Trapattoni’s imminent arrival.
Once the Italian was jettisoned by John Delaney five years later, another U21 boss in Noel King took the reins.
Germany’s 3-0 win in Cologne reflected a deflating sense to a campaign that was an afterthought by the time a 3-1 win over lowly Kazakhstan was sealed.
Granted, John O’Shea carries magnetism on another level to the pair of veterans.
Yesterday’s press conference presented the two men known as Josh but the player, Cullen, very much assumed the supporting role.
This was O’Shea’s third time in six days to engage in press duties and he remains the central figure within this holding pattern.
Canham, observing quietly in the back row of the room, represents the figurehead in this elongated managerial search – deciding the centurion is the stopgap while the clock winds down on the newcomer’s contract to facilitate his transfer to FAI HQ in early April.
The identity of that chosen one currently rests within the knowledge of only a handful of people. Only on April 3 will the full, 14-person FAI board be informed when asked to rubberstamp Canham’s recommendation.
O’Shea doesn’t seem to be privy, despite it
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