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A word of warning that silence is golden

By Liam Mackey

Saturday, June 02, 2012

We got the full monty here in Montecatini this week, from earth tremors to a minor eruption by Mt Trap.

The humour and novelty and inflated hysteria associated with feeling the earth moving beneath our feet quickly gave way to guilty embarrassment that an event whose most dramatic effect here in Montecatini was one colleagues shaving cream falling off his bathroom shelf, had actually caused death and destruction and wreaked havoc with the lives of people elsewhere in northern Italy.

Not a moment too soon, we in the travelling hack pack were back on our more familiar terra firma and dealing with rather more mundane matters, if that is a word which can properly be described to Kevin Foleys dropping from Irelands Euro 2012 panel. Yes, we all know that the disappointments of sport are put into an altogether different perspective by something like Italy s lethal terremoto, yet it would do a serious disservice to Foley to underplay the considerable emotional impact on his personal and professional life of the sudden termination of his Euro dreams

It ought to be recorded that Giovanni Trapattoni too was visibly sad on Tuesday talking about the decision to leave Foley behind but, as the manager was at also at pains to point out, it was a call he felt duty-bound to make "disregarding personal feeling."

To the extent that he was finally forced into making an entirely professional but, for Foley, deeply painful decision, Trapattoni was only being true to his own footballing principles. And he deserves no criticism for that.

From what, admittedly with hindsight, was the premature announcement of the Euro 2012 squad, to the ambiguous references to "knocks" and "recovery" in the quotes attributed to Trapattoni about Foley in an FAI statement released just after Tuesdays midday deadline, two conditions were in place which helped ensure that, when it finally came, the shock and upset for the unfortunate player and, indeed, for his team mates could hardly be more destabilising or more acute.

Even had it been a bumpy ride thus far in terms of Irelands Euro preparations, the Foley story would still have been big news at home. But in the context of an otherwise controversy-free build-up, it played across all media outlets almost as a mini well, okay, miniscule Saipan 2.

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A word of warning that silence is golden