He has not, he observes, known a season like it, but as Aiden McGeady picks over the bones of the injury affected campaign just about concluded, that night in mid-November still stands out as a particular low point.
The Scots, he acknowledges, put one over on the Irish and the crowd gave him hell. His hope had been that he would score and the visitors would win. In the end, he suggests with a laugh, just having McCarthy out there to take a share of the stick would have made the experience that little bit more bearable.
“We never played well enough to win the game,” says the 28-year-old at an event to promote McDonald’s sponsorship of the FAI’s Future Football programme.
“It would have been nice to have come away with a point, but a bit of ball-watching and switching off at a set-piece has cost us.
“It could have been an important point, but they probably knew which way we were going to play and their formation helped them to get the win. I don’t think anyone on our team could give themselves pass marks for that game, though.
“I’m looking at our team against Scotland and I’m thinking we have got the better players. But they looked the better team. They looked more comfortable in possession, they looked like they knew what they were doing.”
As for his own night, he recalls it being like nothing he had ever experienced before: “It was a game I wasn’t really looking forward to because I knew it would be like that,” says the Everton player.
“But it would have been great if we had won, if I’d scored, if I’d played well, to be honest with you. But we didn’t.
Since then there has been a knee injury suffered back at the turn of the year when things seemed to be really falling into place for him at Goodison Park, followed by a back problem that helped to ensure he would be sidelined until the run in.
Along the way, he featured for Ireland against Poland when not fully fit, but admits now that he was surprised to: “The manager maybe thought it was a risk he was willing to take if I could produce something, but on the night I didn’t.”
Return match
Now, he says, the return match against Scotland offers the opportunity to head into the close season on at least a little bit of a high. Asked if the game is a “must win” he says that’s it’s more of a “mustn’t lose”.
At that point, though, he checks to make sure that Ireland are level on points with the Scots and when he hears that there is in fact a two point gap in their favour, he revises his answer: “Oh, right, sorry didn’t realise that. Well, I suppose we have to win.”
“It’s going to be a great game. There will be a lot of Scottish fans over as well and it will make for a good atmosphere. It will give us that extra – to use that cliché – 12th man and a bit of a lift.”
Then, he says, his intention is to get away and get himself ready for pre-season with Everton, where Roberto Martinez has been positive about his ongoing importance, despite the arrival of Aaron Lennon.
“That didn’t bother me in any way,” he says. “He came in and did quite well. But you always need competition and if it was not him then it would be somebody else. I didn’t look at it as ‘oh, they are signing another winger’. We are always going to have three or four or five wide players. That’s what happens at a big club”
Grealish deliberations
At some point,
Jack Grealish
might be one of those providing the competition for his international place, but McGeady doesn’t sound like he has paid particularly close attention to the teenager’s deliberations.
“I don’t really know what he’s weighing up at the minute,” he says, sounding genuinely unsure. “I suppose he’s probably waiting on England coming in, isn’t he? I obviously don’t know the full story really.
“Maybe he’s waiting for a while to figure out in his head what he’s going to do. Whether he wants to play for England or Ireland.”
