Could there be an end to the struggle for beloved Saint Long?
The appointment of Martin O’Neill as Nottingham Forest manager reminded us of two things: firstly, that football people still believe being a club legend gives you super-powers; and secondly, the value of good PR.
O’Neill, you may remember, spent the dog days of his Ireland reign telling the world how bad his team was. This seemed a slightly counter-productive approach to winning football matches, but O’Neill’s strategy was far more sophisticated than it appeared. He was playing the long game, you see, plotting the course way beyond his eventual sacking and toward his return to the English job market. The message that he had done a loaves and fishes job with Ireland played well to a Forest tribe looking for a messiah.
In fairness to O’Neill —whose attacking strategy by the end of his Ireland reign amounted to catapulting Shane Duffy headlong into the opposition penalty box — a central plank of his argument was the lack of a prolific striker, a Robbie Keane type who scored lots of goals, and the undeniable fact that his most high-profile forward, well, didn’t really score goals at all.
Shane Long’s two years without an international goal coincided with the decline and fall of the O’Neill-Keane empire, though the general sense of escalating chaos means blame does not lie solely at his door. Still, not having the German-slayer version of Long on-hand didn’t help O’Neill.
Shane Long's wonder strike against Germany is the 3 International Goal of the Year! What a moment! #COYBIGhttps://t.co/gH4b71HNDZ
— Ireland Football ⚽️🇮🇪 (@IrelandFootball) March 20, 2016
Long’s last goal for Ireland, scored in the 3-1 win in Moldova in October 2016, was followed by five more for Southampton that season. This was a bumper crop compared with the slim pickings ahead: three goals in 73 appearances, in nearly two years.
With any luck, the lonely struggle of Shane Long will have had its moment of deliverance on Saturday, when a clipped finish against Leicester ended a nine-month spell without a goal. At last, Long could celebrate; his face lit up with joy and relief. Some said his shot was going wide, that Kasper Schmeichel’s foot diverted it into the net and that it should be considered on own goal; the Dubious Goals Committee, one presumes, did not have the heart to convene.
The greater football world was amused: Twitter sniggered when journalist Richard Jolly pointed out that Long’s last four goals for Southampton had come under four different managers.
We in Ireland, didn’t find it so funny. Long holds a special place in Irish hearts, and not just for the shot that arrowed past Manuel Neuer in October 2015. Hewn from the hurling fields of Tipperary to Cork City, Long then seemed to take a bit of that world with him into professional soccer. The spring-heeled leap, the hearty appetite for a physical tussle, the full tilt gallop into space — Long the boy hurler-turned-soccer star was a very Irish hero, and all the more so because he seemed to have remained humble and untainted by success.
The goal against Germany was followed by a purple patch with Southampton as they finished sixth in the Premier League under Ronald Koeman in 2015-16. This form earned Long transfer links with Liverpool and, soon after, the ultimate accolade – an episode of Living With Lucy, in which the eponymous presenter hung out with the striker and his family in their south of England mansion.
The Longs — Shane, wife Kayleah, and daughters Teigan and Erin — could not have come across any cuter if they had been living in a giant cupcake. Viewers were bewitched by the striker’s guitar sing-songs with his daughters and the family’s sweet-natured frolicking in their indoor swimming pool. A nation wrapped its protective arms around the hero and his rosy-cheeked clan.
And then, from the moment Lucy and her camera crew pulled out of the driveway, everything seemed to go wrong.
The goals, never a torrent, became a trickle. Long snatched and swiped at whatever chances he could muster. It became hard to watch. One night with Ireland stands out: the 2-0 home win over Moldova in October 2017. A chance to bag a few, surely? Long missed a hatful, the last a botched prod off his right heel wide of an open goal. He threw his arms up, punched the air, howled in self-disgust, scrunched the legs of his shorts and howled again. We turned our eyes away.
A struggling footballer — calamity keeper or clumsy centre-half—– is always the subject of jokes, but the humiliation of a striker who can’t score goes beyond the taunts of opposing fans. It feels like emasculation; in sport’s culture of caustic masculinity, it suggests a loss of potency.
Long’s game was never based on goals, granted. Only twice in his career has he reached double figures in league football. But he had, as they say in baseball, ‘the tools’: pace, aerial ability, that leap — and crucially, a great attitude.
Managers love that kind of player, a handy adjustable wrench in the tactical tool-belt.
But the goals, the goals. Who knows why they stopped, why the confidence ebbed away? The imperfect technique blamed on his late code change? The niggling injuries that meant he was only available for 10 of 20 games since his last Ireland goal? The revolving door of club bosses?
Watching him suffer, you wondered was it worth it, even with the mansion and the money and the memories of that night against Germany? He gave up two — maybe more — All-Irelands with Tipperary for this, to be the butt of banter from the faceless hordes of English football? Going home each night to his loving family, with the weight of it all on top of him.
Ralph Hasenhüttl has rejuvenated Southampton since taking over from Mark Hughes and likes the cut of Long’s jib. Mick McCarthy is in charge of Ireland now and that camp should be a positive place to be again too.
Long will never be prolific, but perhaps the struggle is over now, and Saturday’s effort will return him to being the useful supplier of many things, of which a modest haul of goals is just one.
