JOHN O’SHEA doesn’t do flustered. Keeping things low key has got him this far and there’s little point in changing that now. The one thing Croatia, Spain and Italy won’t be giving him this summer is a sleepless night.
He’s had a few weeks off recently, courtesy of a calf strain, and Martin O’Neill has had the good grace not to rush him back. It helps when there’s little at stake and the effort put in by O’Shea and his Sunderland team-mates since the manager’s arrival in December ensured they’ve nothing to fear in the handful of games remaining.
It has afforded O’Shea the luxury of sneaking a glance ahead, every now and then, to his imminent debut at a major tournament after 75 caps. Nobody has featured for the Republic of Ireland more often without appearing at either the World Cup or the European Championships.
“Maybe if I had broken into the [Manchester] United team six or seven months earlier than I did, I would have gone to the [2002] Japan/Korea World Cup,” says O’Shea, reflecting on the beginning of a club career that yielded five league medals. “To think 10 years later I’m finally getting the chance to be a part of a major tournament, it just shows you when the chance comes you have do to everything you can to get there and, when you do, to enjoy it.”
The last time the defender went on tournament duty with Ireland was 1998, when he returned with a winners’ medal from the Under-16 European Championships. He’ll be 31 at the end of the month, a married man and a father of one. It’s been a long wait, but the timing seems right.
Giovanni Trapattoni’s Ireland, he says, has a “steeliness” and “self-belief” that wasn’t there in previous incarnations, while “you could rattle off at least 35 players” who might feel they have a case for inclusion. One of those making the most noise is O’Shea’s club-mate James McClean. The Waterford man chuckles when recalling his first encounter with the Derry winger who took everyone in the Premier League by surprise. “Christ! He’s not bad this fella,” were his first thoughts when McClean was “bombing” past him in training.
O’Shea’s sure he’d be a good fit, if he brings to Ireland what he has to Wearside, and “a few more goals before the end of the season” might sway Trapattoni, but he’s also aware of the value of characters like Stephen Hunt, one of those seemingly in danger of being jettisoned if McClean wins the manager over. “He [Hunt] has been fantastic for Ireland when he has been selected and I’m sure he will be at the Euros.”
Whoever is on the plane to Poland alongside him, O’Shea feels “there is definitely something to be looking forward to”. He remembers the parties in the streets in 1990 and ’94, and he’s grateful for the “chance to give that joy to people, to be part of such an amazing feeling, to give the country [a lift].”
His English club-mates reckon he’ll be going home early but he’s not so sure. “‘Don’t worry,’ they’ve said, ‘you’ll be on your holidays soon enough, your Euros will be fairly short’. You definitely feed off that,” laughs O’Shea, in Dublin to help launch the Ford Republic of Football campaign. “That’s something you’ve always been used to, being in England from a young age.”
Ireland are in a far better place, he reckons, compared to England’s “incredible” situation of having no manager or captain. “Can you imagine what we’d be like in that situation? It would be such a surreal feeling for the first European Championships in 24 years to be going in like that,” he adds with a grin and a shake of the head. “But, who knows, it could work out for them, because normally they have themselves lifting the trophy before they’ve arrived at the tournament, so it might work in their favour this time.”
Still, he’d love a crack at them in Ukraine, which is where it would happen if Ireland squeeze out of Poland and Group C. “It would be unbelievable, wouldn’t it? Everyone was hoping we were going to face them in the group stages. I think if we did face them this time it would be just an amazing game to be a part of.”
