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Denis Irwin: celebrating the anti-Beckham

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

“I think you need to get him to talk about David Beckham a bit,” he said.
Which tells you an awful lot about the kind of people running the so-called national broadcaster into the ground, and even more about how easy it is to take a career as decorated as Irwin’s for granted. It didn’t matter to this arriviste fan that the story involved a guy going off to England as a wide-eyed teenager, becoming the best defender on the team of the ’90s, and all the while retaining an intrinsic decency that appears beyond so many of his contemporaries. It didn’t matter that every professional who ever worked with him reeled off anecdote after anecdote about his greatness. It only mattered that he shared a dressing room with the most overrated player in the sport.
This came back to me last Saturday morning. Watching Wolves turn over Manchester United, it was demonstrated once more that there has never been a professional footballer easier to root for than Irwin. Who else but this veteran of nearly 900 first-team starts in England could make you cheer for a side containing a pair of irritating narcissists like Paul Ince and Mark Kennedy? Who else could have the hardcore United away support chanting his name as the players lined up for the start of the second half at Molineux?
It wasn’t just the typically incisive header that set up Kenny Miller’s winning goal, the wonderful challenge on Ronaldo inside the box in the 80th minute, or even the spectacular near miss with the free-kick. It was, as usual, merely watching the way Irwin conducted himself. A man closing in on 40, with every serious medal in the game already in his locker (from his cocky walk you’d think Kennedy was the guy with all the honors at the tail end of an illustrious innings), still working as hard as ever to eke out a win. Exactly like he’s done for nearly two decades. The jersey has changed. The attitude has not.
“He is the perfect model,” United manager Alex Ferguson said during the build-up to that game. “Throughout his career, he has always done the right things. His training was always of a high standard, and that gave him the fitness to carry on to the age he has. He has had a great career.”
Nothing we haven’t heard before from Ferguson. Yet a timely reminder that as he enters the last few months of what has been a truly fantastic outing, the Irish football world will be a lesser place for his retirement. There may have been times last Saturday when Irwin looked vulnerable against Ronaldo — that will happen when playing against players less than half your age — but defending the lead in the last 20 minutes, his contributions were vital. The way he went up a gear as Wolves tenaciously hung on for the three points suggested he knows, like the rest of us, that there won’t be many more performances like this to savor.
When Irwin finally calls it a career this May, it will also mark the departure of one of the few remaining players who span two very different eras in the game. The Manchester United he joined in 1990 used to play pre-season friendlies against Bury and Stockport County. The team he departed two seasons back make marketing forays into Asia and North America every summer. The change caused a massive increase in the money he earned but didn’t thieve him of his qualify of life or affect his character.
To anybody on the outside looking in, Irwin had the best of both worlds. He had all the success, a lot of the trappings, and was still allowed to enjoy a fairly normal life. Never the type of person to invite trouble in pubs or to create tabloid headlines, he could have a pint when others couldn’t. He was a crucial member of the United team, yet off the field people appeared to bother him even less than opponents did on it. Not for him the ordeal of ringing up Manchester stores asking them to open early so he could do his shopping before the
public were around.
“We believe we can beat United,” Irwin said in a prescient interview with the Birmingham Post last Saturday morning. “Even if no one else does. That is the beauty of this league. They are top, we are bottom, but it is not cut in stone that they will win.”
Offered the chance by a BBC interviewer after the game to gloat about putting one over on his former club, he refused to even acknowledge this victory meant more than any other. That was the classy thing to do, and class has been the hallmark of his every move this last 20 years. We won’t be holding our breath for the racy autobiography where Irwin takes a few of his former United or Ireland colleagues out by the roots.
The morning we interviewed Ferguson about Irwin for our documentary, the manager waxed lyrical for half an hour about the man he rates as the best full-back he’s ever worked with. When the cameras were finally turned off, he lingered in his chair.
“What exactly is this for again?”
“It’s a documentary about Denis’s career for RTE,” we said.
“It’s about bloody time ye did one,” he replied.
Nothing more to be said.

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