Wes Hoolahan is 33 years of age.
His prime is long gone. His best years are behind him. They’re over.
And, yet, no-one really got to see them.
Ireland’s best player right now – one of their oldest players – has served his country just 19 times. A country that has reached just one major tournament of the last six. A country looking for something to cheer about. A country crying out for… for a Wes Hoolahan.
And yet, somehow, in the system, his brilliance, his beauty, his bloody Gospel has been suppressed. Silenced.
For God’s sake, he had to wait until he was 24 to make any sort of move across the water. He was thrown on the wing for Shelbourne because a man of his stature couldn’t possibly cut it in the centre of the League of Ireland pitches.
And, at that, he has been doomed to play out his career at Norwich – up and down the divisions – because no-one would dare to take a chance on a player who thinks he can make something happen.
He’s back in the Premier League now, at last, but even that should never have been the extent of Wes Hoolahan’s rise.
But, you see, in these here parts, that’s what happens to players like this.
Players with the actual audacity to take a man on, to thread a pass that might not come off, that’s what happens to them. That’s what happens to players who refuse to pass the buck. Players who take risks. Players who try to win games.
How does someone like Tom Cleverley, someone who offers nothing to a midfield and really doesn’t want to offer anything, get a professional contract in the first place, never mind at a club like Manchester United and a gem like Hoolahan is ignored for so long?
How does a Tom Cleverley get a move to Everton? Joe Allen, Charlie Adam to Liverpool? And Wes Hoolahan gets nothing but lip service.
Sure, we all love him. But Chr*st no, we’re not going to put him in our team.
We thought it was just an English problem. We thought that they were blessed with a bigger pool and more talented footballers but they squandered them all in the search for effect. Resillience. For no risk.
But it turns out we’re guilty of it, too.
Eamon Dunphy’s right when he castigates Martin O’Neill’s deliberation over the side’s most creative player. It shouldn’t even be an issue.
It’s not Martin O’Neill’s fault that Ireland have been dealt a rubbish hand: a horrid qualifying group, an average crop of players and a general feeling of apathy around the country for the national team.
And, do you know what, it’s not even his fault that Wes Hoolahan isn’t front and centre of everything we do. It’s this place’s fault. It’s Ireland’s fault. Britain’s fault.
Robbie Keane was being readied to come into the Scotland match this evening when the game was crying out for a goalscorer. It was crying out for a hero. For a Robbie Keane.
The crowd grew excited, a huge roar went up and then… then there were boos. Gasps of disbelief, anger, because Wes Hoolahan was being sacrificed. The man of the match, the guy who was making the side tick was being taken off because he’s not allowed to play in a 4-4-2 formation. Because that’s the way it is on these islands.
Even Hoolahan’s tackles and interceptions in the Scotland game were brushed over. He plays too much football so he couldn’t be trusted to have a bit of discipline.
From 73 minutes onwards? Ireland were flat. The crowd jumped on the team’s back because, suddenly, there was no fluidity. There was no link man and there sure as hell was no-one taking the fight to the Scots anymore as Hoolahan’s nimble genius, his weighted brilliance was replaced with players rolling the ball to each other two metres apart and kicking back to Shay Given when Scotland had all but Steven Fletcher camped inside their area.
Wes Hoolahan and all his delicious creativeness was replaced with fear. And, for 20 minutes at the end of the game, Ireland were hapless. They were fear-riddled.
Of course they were.
No-one is disputing that O’Neill’s hands aren’t tied; that he doesn’t have a lot to work with or that Ireland are not devoid of a game-winner. But it makes it more incredulous then that a player like Hoolahan would be whipped off, taken out of the battle, sidelined in our hour of need.
It makes it more frustrating that, when the chips are down, we aren’t looking for a player to inspire magic.
We’re looking for a safety net. We’re looking to the comfort of a solid system, the luck of a break, or the unpredictability of a set-piece.
We don’t win these games because we don’t try to. We don’t let players go out and win them for us.
We don’t win big games because we’re crippled with fear of losing them.
The treatment of Wes Hoolahan, not just tonight or by Ireland but throughout his whole career, shows a classic flawed in these footballing systems that they have been trying so hard to fix for over a decade.
It shows fear.
It shows that football in the north west of Europe isn’t ready to fully embrace a Wes Hoolahan. Not yet anyway.
And it’s a crying shame that we have wasted his talent.
