Bullish mood as Heimir Republic seeks to exit recession

"The time for development is over," Heimir Hallgrimsson announced boldly at the beginning of the FAI's promo ahead of Ireland's first competitive game of the year.

All told, it's been a very lengthy prelude for our Icelandic gaffer as he awaited his first major tournament qualifier.

So far, it seems like his tenure has consisted of 10% football management and 90% diplomatic outreach.

Heimir has spent much of his 14 months in the job getting to know the various stakeholders in the football family, attuning himself to their (many) sensitivities and patiently hearing out their (again, many) grievances.

There's been an unmistakable sense of a man being careful to take the temperature on the ground, like an enlightened colonial administrator or Rory Stewart that time he was de facto governor of a province in Iraq.

It's been a masterful display of humility and emotional intelligence.

At this stage, he's probably on first name terms with the people manning the turnstiles at Tallaght Stadium and Tolka Park.

His one mis-step, attracting the ire of Stephen Bradley by casually speculating that Shamrock Rovers' 2024 Conference League campaign could earn some of their players the ultimate prize of a move elsewhere, was expertly smoothed out over a coffee.

Damien Duff was the one LOI manager who remained impervious to his charms. Before his abrupt departure in the summer, Duffer maintained a cold disposition to the Ireland manager and rarely missed the opportunity to trumpet his latter-day indifference to the fortunes of the national team.

"I don't know what the game is this week," Duff said ahead of the March relegation play-off. "I only found out the other day it was Bulgaria, home and away. I'm not sure what it means." (To be fair, Irish football has long had a blind spot when it comes to the proud nation of Bulgaria - Big Jack never truly got it straight in his head whether it was Romania or Bulgaria that Gary Mackay scored the goal against.)

Ireland's last foreign manager Giovanni Trapattoni was a far more remote, absentee figure. The League of Ireland wasn't the same insistent powerbase that it is these days and Trap, in his attitude, made it abundantly clear that the league was about as relevant to his job as the Kilmacud Sevens.

Sportsfile's photo gallery brings us evidence of Trap taking in a couple of LOI games - a Bohs-Galway match in August 2009, a Pat's-Bohs game in May 2010 - though his attendance was purely in an ambassadorial capacity and certainly not a scouting mission.

His 'In Ireland, there is no league' quote - delivered to the Italian press in the wake of his resignation by way of emphasising what a good fist of things he'd made in this backwater - certainly caused offence and has reverberated down the years, almost as much as John Delaney's 'problem child', line which was uttered a few months afterwards.

The last time Ireland sought to qualify for a World Cup in North America - and successfully, by God! - there were a whopping seven teams in the group and battle commenced even before the previous European Championship finals were played.

The giant USSR had just been smashed into many smithereens and there were scores of new nations to accommodate. Consumer capitalism hadn't quite taken off in the eastern states by the summer of 1993, as was apparent from Ireland's run of away games in early June, where all the advertisement hoardings were for Senator Windows and Irish Permanent.

This time around, it will be a virtual sprint, the whole thing wrapped up in the guts of two months, with limited room for error and every game freighted with massive urgency.

As is reflected in his comments this week, Heimir's rhetoric has changed markedly in 12 months. Initially, he struck a judiciously cautious tone, which was in stark contrast to his predecessor.

Always anxious to justify his worthiness for the role, Stephen Kenny kept on writing cheques his midfielders couldn't cash. Notably when he declared that Ireland were primed to win their 2022 Nations League group after a decent burst of form in the second half of 2021.

Heimir didn't make the same mistake and set more modest ambitions - albeit probably not modest enough for the prevailing wisdom at the time. His target was survival in League B of the Nations League, of which we have been the most devoted lodgers since the competition was instituted.

Even that looked a tall order after his first international window, when hopelessness reached heights not seen since the dog days of tbe late Eoin Hand era. The tragicomedy of Rice and Grealish scoring England's goals at the Aviva and the home crowd booing Will Smallbone's announcement as the Man of the Match award against Greece will, with any luck, go down as a low point. Fans didn't even have the delusions of the Kenny era to keep spirits up.

The manager came under pressure for adopting a watching brief in the England home game, allowing John O'Shea and Paddy McCarthy to perform much of the managerial duties.

Fortunately for Heimir, the bigger picture overshadowed everything at that point. People had little patience for discussion of finer points like team selection and in-game tactics. It was all the macro concerns of 'how we ended up here.'

But things quickly got better from there. There was a touching outburst of emotion after Ireland beat Finland in Helsinki, from a fanbase who had forgotten what it was to feel joy. In the pub where this writer watched the game, the many young people there were largely disengaged from the match and only perked up in the closing minutes when it became apparent Ireland were closing in on a rare victory.

Against that, the manager himself put things in perspective by privately expressing shock at the size of the away contingent that night.

The victories over Bulgaria in March may not have made much of an impression on Duffer's radar but they saw a rare lurch into contentment among the Irish home support.

The fans even briefly forgot their longstanding animus against Matt Doherty and the window also witnessed the arrival of a potent creator in the shape of Finn Azaz, then of Middlesbrough.

Heimir has taken it as his cue to dial up the bullishness. Ahead of the summer friendlies, he airily announced that he'd given the Championship players the window off on account of the fact that they'd be busy across the pond next summer, presumably acclimatising in Orlando or Cancún.

Nonetheless, some of the bitter trademarks of the Kenny era have made an unwelcome return.

Troy Parrott had been clocking Harry Kane numbers early on in the Eredivisie this season, only for injury to intervene at an inopportune moment, a sickening echo of Evan Ferguson's forced omission from the September 2023 qualifiers after scoring a hat-trick against Newcastle United in the Premier League, the apex of his career so far.

Ferguson appears to have started well in Rome, even if experience has taught us to be wary of the hyperbole emanating from the Irish player tracker accounts on social media. Nonetheless, he has started up top in Roma's opening two Serie A games, both of which were 1-0 wins. The move has generated a great deal of excited intrigue - especially among that generation for whom Serie A retains a particular mystique.

Caoimhin Kelleher finally has possession of a No 1 jersey following his move to Brentford. Nathan Collins continues to play every second God gave at the same club. Jake O'Brien looks very assured as an Everton regular under David Moyes.

Accompanying all this are the usual reports that the Hungarians are a bit off-colour at the minute. That their confidence has taken a dent in the rarefied atmosphere of League A. That we may be catching Orban's boys at the right time. That they're no great shakes. They may even be bang-average shakes.

Ireland won the most recent fixture between the pair, last year's summer friendly during John O'Shea's interim reign, Parrott scoring a late winner with one of the least convincing finishes imaginable.

The football grounds for supposing that Ireland will beat Hungary to second spot in the group - after which there would still be the matter of a four-way play-off - still seems rather iffy on the face of things.

Ireland's last few qualification campaigns have been effectively stillborn. Hopefully the air of tentative optimism will survive the opening night this time.

Watch Republic of Ireland v Hungary in World Cup qualifying on Saturday from 7pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Follow a live blog on rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app. Listen to live radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1

Click here to read article