international bright young thing

There can't have been too many players who have provoked a debate about their international future after 68 minutes of first team foot ball, but thanks to the Scottish media, Aiden McGeady found himself the centre of attention for more reasons than simply a superb performance in his first match in the top team. MANFRED LURKER has his say on the great non-debate.

As debuts go it was possibly one of the most exciting we've seen since Billy McNeill whipped the covers off a floppy-haired earing-wearing teenager back at the start of the 80s and unleashed young Charles de Goal to wreak havoc on unsuspecting Premier League defenders.

For those of us who have been following his Celtic career since he signed professional terms as a 15 year-old, a mere three years ago, the eagerly-anticipated first team appearance of Aiden McGeady at Tynecastle lived up to all our expectations - and then some.

It wasn't just that he scored a goal worthy of the K of Ks either. His contribution throughout showed a maturity way beyond his years and brought him the ultimate compliment from his sporting Hearts opponents - scything attempts at dismemberment nearly every time he was on the ball as Hammer Throwers Inc. set about organising his 'Welcome to the SPL Youngster' initiation ceremony.

McGeady took it all in his stride. Clearly easing his way in gradually, he restrained himself from indulging in a flamboyant display of some of the more outrageous trickery of which he's capable, yet he still managed to evoke an audible collective gasp of appreciation from the Celtic fans behind the goal with one particular lightning shimmy inside the penalty box which left his opponent with one eye going for the messages and the other coming back with the change. All this in front of a packed Tynecastle in full baying mode and live on TV in the full glare of the nation's football pundits. If you happen to know any other average 18 year-olds then compare and contrast.

The result was his first (of many we hope) Man of the Match award and his first post-match interviewed by Chick Young. It could have been an opportunity for Chick to reprise grovelling apology for an interview following Frank de Boer's debut for Rangers at Firhill. Not that we would wish such a patronising, sycophantic cliche fest on young McGeady, but a routine yarn with the delighted kid along 'Didn't' you do well' lines would no doubt have rounded McGeady's afternoon off nicely and given him the chance to reflect on his achievement and bask, however briefly, in the moment.

Eureka!

Instead, Chick returned at the first opportunity to a bone on which he had been gnawing since the previous Thursday when he did a report from Barrowfield on Celtic's youth development programme. While filming that piece Chick had apparently stumbled across McGeady in training and began behaving the way Archimedes must have done the first time he flooded the bathroom. For not only had Chick discovered one of the most exciting football talents Celtic have had on the books for years, he also had 'a story'.

The angle was that young McGeady, while eligible to play for both Scotland or the Republic of Ireland at international level, had opted for the latter. Chick took great delight in letting this particular cat out of the bag, relishing in the anguish he was clearly feeling as a footslogger of the Tartan Army - something he never tires of telling us - and reaction on the Saturday football radio shows was swift and vociferous. Pundits were bandying words like 'scandalous' around while spraying moralic acid in all directions.

The phone-ins were similarly gridlocked with punters desperate to have their say about who was to blame for this shocking state of affairs.

By the following weekend the Sunday papers were ready to let rip as well, and having had a week to check all of the facts and consider all sides of the story - not least the boy's - there appeared in print some startlingly bad articles, even by the depressing standards of our hacks.

Gavin Berry in the Mail was telling us that Aiden's decision to play for Ireland, '...has been met with widespread fury from some Scottish football fans and could result in him being the target of abuse.' There was no attempt to explain to the Mail's readers which team, or teams, these football fans were likely to support, nor the reasons for their 'fury' - the lad's decision to play for Ireland seemed explanation enough. The gist of the article was even worse in its blinkered outlook: Berry helpfully explained that McGeady would be able to use Neil Lennon as a role model for handling the inevitable stick. Condemning the inevitable stick was obviously beyond his remit. It was sufficient to say that McGeady will simply have to accept it.

I wanna be defected

Yet perhaps one of the most insidious articles to appear the week after McGeady's appearance at Tynecastle was published in one of the broadsheets, in which Alan Campbell was given a column to 'bemoan the defection of potential Scotland star Aiden McGeady.'

According to Campbell, this 'defection', with all its connotations of something disloyal and underhand, is 'a sorry tale' and the 'blame' has to be shared by Celtic, the SFA and the Scottish Schools Football Association.

Through the eyes of Campbell, Celtic are culpable because, 'Unfortunately for Scotland, changes to the youth development policy at Parkhead... led to today's sorry pass. Jock Brown, Eric Black, George Adams and Willie McStay were among the Parkhead movers and shakers who decreed that young boys would no longer be allowed to play for their school teams... The consequence was that a boy who didn't play for his school would not be considered for the SSFA international team... McGeady found his route to representative football blocked.'

What Campbell neglects to mention - or fails to realise - is that the decision to withdraw the boys under Celtic's tutelage from schools football was taken with the best interests of the young players at heart and consequently one of the reasons why the whole debate about this particular young player is taking place. Put simply, Celtic wanted to instil in their schoolboy players a sense of professionalism, which meant exposing them to ideas pioneered by such as the Ajax Academy, proper diets, qualified physiotherapists and removing them from some of the go-ahead ideas associated with the rites-of-passage traditionally part of the schoolboy game in this country: roughhouse leagues, incompetent refs, red ash pitches and the risk of copping a Mouldmaster in the goolies on a frosty December morning to name but a few of the delights on offer.

All of the aforementioned 'movers and shakers', as well as a few more besides, set out to change the face of professional youth football in this country. They succeeded to such an extent that now all of the other SPL teams follow a similar model. Campbell might be harking back in his febrile memory to some imaginary halcyon period of pre-McCrone schools football and genius teacher/ coaches, but the rest of the world has moved on.

The decision of Adams, Black et al to adopt the continental approach, far from hindering the development of Scotland's future international players, will actually benefit it in the long run.

Guilt edged

Still, the future generation of putative Wembley Wizards will not include Aiden McGeady, and this is what's bothering Campbell, who turns his woebegone countenance once more to the question of finding culprits.

The SSFA are on record as saying that they would have welcomed the schoolboy McGeady 'with open arms' and to his credit Campbell allows McGeady senior to put the record straight on this one: the truth is that George Adams offered the SSFA McGeady's services as a schoolboy player but he was knocked back on the grounds that he wasn't playing for his school team.

Whether or not the SSFA are being mendacious, it was at this point that Packy Bonner expressed an interest and offered the boy the chance to play for the Republic of Ireland. Nobody at Celtic can stand accused of being anything other than accommodating to Scotland with regard to Aiden, so there is no charge to answer. Tommy Burns and all the rest have, at one time or another, tried to persuade McGeady to play for Scotland. But by the time this particular issue reached the public domain he had already played for, and captained, Ireland at under- 16, 17, 18 and 19 level. He was comfortable with the guidance he was receiving under the tutelage of respected coaches like Brian Kerr and had played representative football at many prestigious youth tournaments around the world.

It's true that there have, in the past, been players who have manipulated their eligibility status in order to grab the chance to play international football when it became clear to them that they weren't going to be selected for the country they were born in. It is a situation that Ireland - and Scotland - have exploited.

But what we're looking at in the case of Aiden McGeady is not a callow - not to mention shallow - youth with tenuous connections to Ireland. He has family there, visits them two or three times a year and has a deep-rooted genuine love for the country. Those who would deny him that need only look as far as their own expatriate relatives should they need to understand that such a thing is possible.

He was not, as Campbell asserts, 'spirited away' by men with twirly black moustaches and top hats to the sound of evil cackling.

Fair Kop

Last minutes attempts to rescue the Celtic Wonderkid from the clutches of Kerr and his demonic crew have proved fruitless, so Campbell returns at the end of his article to the boy himself. McGeady's decision to remain part of the Irish set up - his 'loyalties' as Campbell puts it - is contrasted with that of Darren Fletcher of Manchester United. Fletcher has an Irish mother and therefore, according to Campbell, 'an even stronger claim to play for Ireland.... Roy Keane and Kerr both worked on him (presumably Fetcher was strapped to a chair at the time with an anglepoise lamp shining in his eyes with Kerr as good cop and Keane sticking the boot in) but the Dalkeith-raised youngster was having none of their Irish overtures.'

I doubt very much if there was a furore in Ireland about Fletcher's decision, nor if there were articles in the papers advising him how to put up with the inevitable stick his desertion would heap upon his young shoulders, nor indeed whether his disloyalty to the country of his mother's birth could stand comparison with any other player whose decision in such a matter went to the advantage of Ireland.

Instead, I suspect there was an acceptance from the public and the media that the player is entitled to do what he thinks is right for himself and whatever will make him happiest in his career.

It is an attitude that most people involved in the playing side of the game, including Rainer Bonhof, Berti Vogts and Ross Mathie at the SFA, are only too happy to agree with. Chick and the rest of the Moral Majority should try to learn something from it.

MANFRED LURKER