67 minutes are on the clock.
Ireland trail Poland by a goal. The fans are losing their voices, the team is losing its heart.
James McClean sizes up the full back, he takes him to the line and he whips one on top of Robbie Keane’s head. The crowd is interested.
James McClean sizes up the full back, he takes him to the line, he wins a corner. The supporters rise to their feet.
A ball breaks loose in the middle. A Polish player looks like he’s going to nick it away. He doesn’t. James McClean goes through him. The Aviva is shaking on its hinges. Ireland are resurrected.
James McClean says ‘no more’.
Only a select few players ever get the opportunity to do what every boy at one stage or another dreams of. Only a lucky few get to pull on their international shirt and represent their country. Few of them get to win. Fewer get to score.
Less of them ever keep their promises. The promise of that little boy who left the sitting room early during the game so he could go out, kick ball and take the first steps of fulfilling a dream.
Those promises, for most of us now, are nothing more than an angry scolding, an empty threat, a frustrated whine barked from the safety of an armchair. They’re promises of what we would do if we were given the chance. Promises of how we would help. Demands of more.
James McClean keeps his promise.
He’s been thrust into the limelight in the last three and a half years, plucked from the League of Ireland, salvaged from the Sunderland reserves and thrown into the deep end told to sink or swim. He’s kept his head above water not because he’s a strong swimmer, simply because he refuses to go under.
McClean isn’t the best footballer in the world. He’s not even near the best footballer in the Ireland squad. And yet he’s endeared and he’s trusted and he’s held up as the man we should all aspire to be because of one simple thing: he loves playing for his country. Heck, he just loves playing football.
“I think he’s a great character,” Martin O’Neill spoke about his winger today. “He treats training sessions just like football matches. He’s as keen as they come. He made a big impact against Poland – in fact, I think he got momentum again just at a stage that we might’ve thought about faltering. He came on and gave us real impetus.”
There are no swings and roundabouts with McClean because he’s on a constant high.
He’s on a constant search for a football, a zest for the roar of the crowd and he’s constantly trying to serve Ireland in whatever way he can.
At a time when men like Aiden McGeady are labelled an enigma, unpredictable, James McClean is the antidote of inconsistency because what he does comes from the heart. What he does is carved out not by skill or luck, just pure raw passion.
He told us that he would make a big tackle against Poland to get the crowd going, he told us he would. And he delivered.
Then he ran after the ball and he sprinted down the line as if he was kicking around the streets of Creggan again. Just kicking around with his friends with nothing to fear but the day he would ever stop enjoying his football.
The Derry man had been watching ball for long enough, he had been a fan of the game for long enough that, when he was dropped into the middle of the action from nowhere as a 22-year-old, he knew nothing else but unencumbered enthusiasm.
He hasn’t been corrupted by the fear of playing football, by the fear of failure. He’s just a fan given a chance to go out and help his country.
And, like we all promise to do, he delivers. He runs, he tracks back, he puts his body on the line and he piles forward again as if there was no tomorrow. It doesn’t always work out but it’s always full-hearted, it’s always with the best of intentions. And it’s always for the cause.
Right now, there seems to be some form of disconnect between the nation and the team. There seems to be a lack of a genuine superstar to excite the crowd, to inspire the youngsters. But James McClean brings the side back to the fans in a completely different way.
He brings the fans to the side.
And he does it with pure heart. Nothing else. He just plays football like he’s one of us.
He plays it the way we all promise we would if we were given the chance.
The difference is that he’s been lucky enough to get that chance.
But he doesn’t take it for granted. Not for a second.
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