They reckon that more than 411,000 viewers flicked on Ireland’s Euro 2025 play-off with Wales at some point last Tuesday.
More than a few seemed to log straight on to social media as soon as the final whistle went to engage in a bit of mindless gloating about how this team, and specifically the captain, had got their comeuppance.
Which seems an odd way to reflect on a harrowing defeat for the national team, but each to their own.
Those people probably missed Ruesha Littlejohn’s raw and frank appraisal of the problems in Irish football but, given that they are only interested in being outraged, they wouldn’t have been able to comprehend what the midfielder was saying.
Littlejohn, moments after stepping off the field for possibly the last time as an Ireland footballer, was able to articulate some long-standing issues in the game here.
‘In Irish football, we need to look at the grassroots. Change our game, change our style. Look at the best teams, they’re all so comfortable on the ball,’ the veteran midfielder told Tony O’Donoghue moments after Ireland’s Euro 2025 dream died.
“If I’m being honest, with Irish football, we haven’t really got the grassroots here…we need to do more to consistently get to tournaments”
Sensational interview with a devastated Ruesha Littlejohn. Funding is a huge problem for Irish women’s footballpic.twitter.com/KgXWun13ht
— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) December 3, 2024
‘I think that’s the journey we’re on now and it starts with the young ones. Everyone has to get more better on the ball. Yeah we can be hard, we can be resilient, we put our bodies on the line.
‘Yeah we have Megan’s throws and we have big girls who can win headers, but if we need to go to these big tournaments we need to do more.’
It’s been said before, of course. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. At bar counters up and down the land or on countless Whatsapp groups, after another agonising defeat.
Or another evening watching footballers from some Central or Eastern European nation pass the ball around us, as the honest folk in green shirts huff and puff and try to compensate for a lack of technique by effort and endeavour. The difference here is that this time the honesty about our shortcomings came from inside the dressing room.
We have had that before. I covered the Irish men’s team during Giovanni Trapattoni’s era when we would leave each press conference convinced that no Irish person can kick a football straight, so convincing was the charming Italian about how bad our players were, his words backed up by sidekick Marco Tardelli. But that was a crazy time.
A billionaire was bankrolling the Italian duo, while the Association was getting saddled with debt that almost sent it out of business and nobody could quite believe one of the most famous, and successful, managers in the game had taken over our country.
By the time Martin O’Neill was lamenting not having the players and wishing that Robbie Keane and Wes Hoolahan were 10 years younger, we were sick of hearing the same record. Over and over.
It is why so many of us bought into the philosophy that Stephen Kenny was espousing. I am sure Kenny would have loved to have a 27-year-old Weso too, but he didn’t moan about that and instead claimed that there is no reason why Irish players can’t be technically proficient.
In his world, Hoolahan wasn’t the outlier but the template. We all know where that led; Irish football’s great culture war and the truce remains fragile.
But what made Littlejohn’s words different is that they came from a player. And a female footballer, at that. She was admitting that we do have to get better on the ball. Better at retaining possession.
It is an age-old debate that has been going on for as long as I have been reporting on football.
Marc Canham’s Football Pathways plan is just the latest in a long line of initiatives to make Irish players better, technically.
We had the talent development plan, the emerging talent programme. The difference now, at least on the men’s side, is that Brexit means we can’t go down the traditional route of simply farming our best and brightest over to the UK.
That is still happening in the women’s game, but the girls are usually 18 before leaving the likes of Peamount and Shelbourne for clubs in the WSL or the Championship.
Following Littlejohn’s appraisal, her former international team-mate Karen Duggan, doing analysis for RTE, agreed with her and pointed out that two of the players to establish themselves in the past 15 months – Caitlin Hayes and Anna Patten – came from the English system. Second generation, in other words. Probably an indictment of how we are producing players here.
Given it was such a close game, and Ireland did everything but equalise in the final few minutes as Megan Campbell’s long throws caused havoc, it seemed odd to be getting all existential about Irish football.
But the first thing to do to fix something is recognise there is a problem. For years, we had this discussion about the men’s team after a miserable defeat. It is kinda heartening to be having the same chat about the women – who are much higher in the FIFA rankings than their male counterparts.
Watching the game back the next day, having realised the hollow and empty feeling that awaited at the final whistle, was an interesting experience.
Des Curran implored everyone ‘to fasten their seat belts’ after Patten pulled one back, but I knew Olivia Clark’s goal was living a charmed life.
And this was Wales’ time. They had never been to a major tournament. They were in the exact same place that we were two years ago in Hampden – the same group of hungry and talented players and they had hired an astute and knowledgeable coach from the outside. Go figure!
It still won’t make it any easier when we are watching Jess Fishlock and Hannah Cain strut their stuff in Switzerland.
RTE are contractually obligated to cover the Euros anyway, irrespective of Irish involvement. They could do worse than finding a place on their panel for Ruesha Littlejohn. She will certainly have some interesting things to say.