There were two kids running through Orly airport in Paris on Monday morning causing their parents an absolute headache.
They were wrestling and tripping, throwing their football on the ground and tackling one another until they’d be told off again and, then, when enough time had passed and they thought they could get away with it for another 20 seconds, the ball would be dropped once more and held beneath the soles of the older one, teasing his brother to try and take it off him.
A day later, they were still draped in Ireland’s new white jersey. On the back of one of them read the number 19. The other, 20.
Robbie Brady. Wes Hoolahan.
It’s been so long since this country has had a player to idolise. It’s been so long since someone has inspired the nation into wreaking havoc at airports just so they can imitate their idols, their heroes. Just so they can be Wes Hoolahan. If only for 20 seconds at a time.
The Dubliner’s meteoric rise in Irish circles has almost been hard to enjoy. His mouthwatering genius has nearly been too difficult to fully appreciate. Nearly.
Any time you see Wes Hoolahan taking the piss out of any backline, you just think to yourself where the hell has he been.
Any time you see Wes Hoolahan slipping a pass that would salivate you dry, you’re reminded that he’s 34 years of age.
Any time you see Wes Hoolahan take a ball from the sky as if he had sandbags on his left foot, any time you see him square up and hold on as three defenders close down all of his space and he still wriggles out before going again and demanding that the ball is played right back to his feet, you’re hit with a sobering question: what the hell have we done?
How did this happen? How did this man escape our grasps for so long?
"It's a shame to Irish football that we didn't get to see him for more time" – Robbie Brady on Wes Hoolahan https://t.co/JJpQ787HL7 #COYBIG
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) June 13, 2016
34 years of age, 34 caps.
And it’s only been in the last four years that the best technical Irish footballer of his generation got to show what he was really capable of. It’s only been in the last four years that he’s gotten the chance to play for his country. He got a few seconds in 2008 in a friendly against Colombia but, until Martin O’Neill came on board, Wes Hoolahan – by this stage, a 31-year-old – had played just 106 minutes of competitive international football.
Managers are to blame, systems are to blame, we’re to blame.
Whoever is most at fault, we can’t let Wes Hoolahan go with just one proper campaign for his country. That can’t happen. We can’t let him go after lighting up what was undoubted darkness in Irish football and leading the way to some kind of glory or respect again with the safest, most radiant of flashlights.
We can’t let him go.
Irish football has come too far in the last two years under the guidance of their iconic number 20 to risk losing any of it now.
Too many kids have watched this man – this Irish man with the same background as the rest of us – take the ball at his feet under whatever kind of pressure, turn defenders inside out, jink around their tackles and pick passes that most of us have only read about in foreign language books.
Too many people want to be Wes Hoolahan now and you can feel it in the air, the revolution stirring. The uprising of the inspired. The next Wes Hoolahan coming.
It’s too important for us to lose Hoolahan now. For the fans who’ve slogged it through some disgusting matches, for the kids who have had nothing to believe in yet and for the team who sure as hell could use a leader like Wes Hoolahan coming off the bench and completely changing games. Or making history like he did against Italy.
But, mostly, it’s too important for Hoolahan.
He might have been deprived of this stage for far too long but he is glowing under its spotlight now. He deserves this audience for as long as he wants because it is all our fault that he wasn’t given it in the first place.
He deserves the plaudits he’s earning game by game from all over the world. He deserves the feeling he got from bursting the Swedish net in front of 80,000 spectators.
He deserves to make up for lost time – for stolen time, rather – and to remind us even more of what might have been.
He deserves to see Hoolahan #20 at the back of the next Ireland jersey on the body of the next Irish kid trying to take the piss out of his brother with his foot on the ball.
And he deserves to leave a legacy and maybe make sure that the next Hoolahan isn’t ignored for so long.
We’re sorry, Wes. But please stay on. Please don’t retire.
We need you. The whole country needs you.
