LOUISE TAYLORprofiles the 23-year-old Irish winger who has made a huge impact since his arrival at Sunderland
IT WAS early December, gale force winds meant that car doors needed to be opened with extreme care and Martin O’Neill wore his new club coat for the first time. The venue was Eppleton Colliery Welfare football club in deepest County Durham and Sunderland reserves were thrashing Manchester United 6-3.
Frissons of excitement greeted the arrival of O’Neill, who had succeeded Steve Bruce as Sunderland’s manager and the talk centred on whether Ryan Noble would be hot-housed into the first team. A young striker hitting top form following back and knee injuries, Noble scored four goals but the eyes of O’Neill were drawn to another player, a left wing named James McClean.
“I didn’t know anything about James,” O’Neill said. “But, all of a sudden, this hungry kid was busting a gut in 70mph winds. He had courage, was physically very strong and the first time he got the ball he took his man on.”
Three days later McClean – pronounced McClane – made his senior debut, stepping off the bench to turn things Sunderland’s way as O’Neill’s first game saw his new team come from behind to beat Blackburn. Since then the €420,000 signing from Derry City has established himself as an automatic first choice, scoring four goals. He is likely to feature prominently in Arsene Wenger’s FA Cup team-talk on Wearside tonight.
A hallmark of O’Neill’s managerial career has been his habit of fast-tracking bright youngsters, with Emile Heskey at Leicester and Aston Villa’s Gabriel Agbonlahor notable examples.
“It gives all the young players at a club a boost,” said Sunderland’s manager. “I’ve fast-tracked some useless ones in my time but James certainly doesn’t fall into that category.”
Instead a winger who turns 23 in April is not only arguably the Premier League’s discovery of the season, but he also offers hope to late developers everywhere.
Football’s equivalent of the dust-shrouded Old Master hidden away in an attic, McClean’s League of Ireland displays for Derry City had gone largely unnoticed, with only Lincoln and Peterborough pursuing him.
Everything changed when the left-footed player described by Stephen Kenny, his manager at Derry, as someone “never happy to be just OK, who always wanted to be the best”, shone against Manchester City for a League of Ireland XI in a pre-season tournament in Dublin last July.
Suitably impressed, Bruce “took a risk” on “one for the future”.
Perversely Bruce spent subsequent months lamenting his lack of a “proper” left winger and complaining that if he had only been allowed to sign Charles N’Zogbia results would have been infinitely better.
Despite taking quite a shine to the young Irishman’s personality, Bruce consistently resisted throwing him into the deep end.
“We can’t expect James to walk into the Premier League and be an instant success,” he said.
Variously described as “modest”, “sensible” and “quiet”, McClean does not lack strong, sometimes controversial opinions.
Brought up in a nationalist, Celtic-supporting family in the Creggan area of Derry, he represented Northern Ireland at under-21 level but exercised his right, enshrined in the Good Friday agreement, to switch allegiance to the Republic.
“I’m following my heart,” he said. “My reasons are only football reasons – there’s no politics involved.”
Nonetheless a man who accepts his hopes of making the Republic of Ireland’s Euro 2012 squad are, perhaps surprisingly, remote, now describes his under-21 sojourn as a “defection” and recently rebuked the BBC’s Colin Murray over the vexed issue of Irishness.
When Murray, who is from Belfast, commented that it was good to see a Northern Irishman scoring Sunderland’s winner against Stoke, McClean’s riposte, via Twitter, was unequivocal: “Colin Murray get it right will you, it’s Irish.”
O’Neill, the first Catholic to captain Northern Ireland, knows the north’s loss represents a significant southern gain.
“At some point his form will dip but the level of consistency James has shown is truly amazing,” he said. “He’s been exceptional.”
If McClean’s penchant for accelerating to the byline before whipping in crosses – ideally having beaten his full-back on the outside – make him seem something of a throwback, he comes equipped with 21st-century accessories.
Strong, quick, apparently fearless and, at 5ft 11in, reasonably tall, McClean possesses the sort of athlete’s physique that explains why he – rather than the prolific yet less physically developed Noble – got a foot in the first-team door. It also means his game is not entirely reliant on wingers’ tricks.
He should shortly be rewarded with a contract which could quadruple his €4,800 a week wages. It will reflect a capacity to learn fast. Quite apart from swiftly buying into an assiduous work ethic, McClean has also added variety by cutting in on the inside or embarking on surging diagonal runs. If he can occasionally rampage around the pitch a little wildly, his thrilling directness threatens to cause Wenger nightmares.
