It's October 2016 and the world has been turned upside down. Perched in the RTE studio in Lansdowne Road, Eamon Dunphy proclaims that the Irish national side have much to learn from a League of Ireland team.

"I'll tell you about Dundalk..." he told Liam Brady.

Back in the 1980s, Eamon Dunphy was the football correspondent for the Vincent Browne edited Sunday Tribune. As part of this role, he was tasked with covering the League of Ireland, an undertaking he approached with a heroic degree of insolence.

Week after week, he ripped apart the 'chicken league', a name he coined in honour of the LOI's sponsors at the time, Pat Grace's chain of Fried Chicken shops.

In 1990, when the idea was first floated to stick a Dublin-based team in the Scottish League (read about here) the League of Ireland rose in anger and disgust.

FAI President Fran Fields proclaimed the 'Dublin City' proposal a "stab in the back" for the League of Ireland. Writing now in the Sunday Independent, Eamon Dunphy did not agree. His considered opinion on that point was that 'you can't hurt a corpse by stabbing it.'

He was also sceptical that the Dublin City idea would undermine the League of Ireland in the eyes of the Irish public.


The idea that the League of Ireland could be rendered any less credible than it is, is amusing not to say audacious.

Tonight, he gets drawn into a debate with Liam Brady who is rather more sceptical of the relevance of Dundalk's European success. Brady, who lives in London, admits he doesn't watch any domestic football and the only time he's seen Dundalk was in the 2-0 home defeat to Legia Warsaw. He cops a bit of flak.

Liam Brady only seeing Dundalk once you couldnt make it up? — Cillian Whelton (@CillianWhelton) October 6, 2016

Dunphy accused Brady of "offering a counsel of despair" to Irish football fans with his dry insistence that Ireland will be playing lump ball for the forseeable. An apt phrase for a book on the Giovanni Trapattoni era - "A Counsel of Despair".

Dunphy enlisted Dundalk in his argument about the national team in much the same fashion that John Giles did in the Evening Herald this week. Thus the spirit of Gilesy lives still in the RTE studio.


Like Giles, Dunphy's heart sinks when he hears bespectacled opposition manager Hans Foreigner come over and attempt to placate us with his off-the-peg opinions on the Irish football team.

"Very strong, physical... good in the air... lots of long balls... never giving up... will be difficult to deal with..."

And his heart sinks even lower when foreign managers come over here to manage us and come to much the same conclusion.

Dunphy and Giles have together spent years telling the youth of Ireland that there was a time before Jack Charlton when Ireland didn't qualify for anything but were renowned for their neat and technical football.

Some agree wholeheartedly. Others wonder whether the lads aren't over-romanticising the past a bit.

For Giles, and now Dunphy, Dundalk function as a reminder to the world that the true character of Irish football is not all blood and guts and thunder.


While some Dundalk supporters are no doubt feeling patronised by this stuff, it is a measure of their achievement that Eamo, long contemptuous of the League, is now citing them as a model.

However, Dunphy (and Sadlier) both stopped well short of arguing that Dundalk players should be tossed into the Irish team.

That's almost a false choice. They're not pros. They wouldn't play individually in the Premier League. What they are collectively, though, is a good footballing team. And there are loads of good footballing teams that these lads play for in England. Liam's arguments is that we don't have stars who can dazzle ya. We do have lads who can pass the ball and can play. It's a counsel of despair you're (Liam) offering us... You are! You're saying we can't play this game.

Here he is extolling Dundalk before all that, however.