November 14, 2014. Aiden McGeady remembers that night.
He remembers returning to a Glasgow stadium where he was once a bona fide hero and he remembers the boos, the heckles, the chants. He remembers the disdain coming from the Celtic Park terraces he used to call home and from the Scottish people he grew up with.
His loyalties to the Irish, the same country he represented from U15 level, made him public enemy number one that night. And he hasn’t experienced an atmosphere like it.
“Never before like that [did he get the abuse he got from the stands]. It was kind of a game I really wasn’t looking forward to because I knew it would be like that. But it would’ve been great if we had won, if I had scored or played well – just really have won, to be honest – but we didn’t and it made it a whole lot worse because I know a lot of the Scottish players and I know a lot of the Scottish fans and they bring it up to me when I’m home.”
Of course, McGeady doesn’t thank a certain player on the same boat for leaving him sailing those stormy Glasgow seas alone. An injury to his Everton team mate was unfortunate for the player and the team but it meant he had to face the crowd on his own.
“It was probably worse for me because James McCarthy was injured as well, wasn’t he?” McGeady laughed. “So it was just basically me taking the brunt of the abuse.
“I couldn’t really get into the game, especially in the first half. And then when I was getting it, I was maybe trying to do too much with it. Maybe it affected me, I don’t think it did really. I just think it was one of those nights when things didn’t quite go to plan.
“It was okay but it’s just stuff you don’t like hearing, even if it is banter. So we’ve got this game coming up and we really want to win, that’s it.”
It doesn’t help that he has a club mate in Steven Naismith constantly reminding the Irish contingent of the result that night. The former Rangers player has been trying to get under the skin of McGeady, Coleman and McCarthy ever since but a win on June 13 in the return fixture will put that right.
“He’s been trying to wind Seamus and Jamesie up but, to be fair, we’re all friends – that’s something I never thought I would say, I’m mates with him. He’s saying his little bit and, on the pitch as well, he likes to talk on the pitch and try to annoy players, but hopefully we can win and we can give him a bit of stick when we go back for pre-season.
“No other player said anything to me but he tried to give me a little bit. I knew he was joking, that’s what he’s like.”
The Republic winger doesn’t have anything else on his mind other that the visit of the Scots. Ireland welcome England beforehand this Sunday but, sitting two points adrift of where they want to be in the Euro qualifying group, Aiden McGeady’s focus is mainly on the competitive fixture against Scotland.
“The Scotland game’s obviously the big one really,” he said. “We want to obviously get our own back on them from the last game. We never played well enough to win the game but it would’ve been nice to come away with a point. A bit of ball-watching and switching off at a set piece has cost us a point and it could’ve been an important point.
“Obviously the Scotland game’s the big one. The England game, of course, is going to be a big game as well but it’s a friendly and the Scotland one’s the most important one from my point of view and I think probably for most players as well.”
But McGeady wants to team to play better than they did in Glasgow where Gordon Strachan looked to have Ireland’s number.
“They probably knew which way we were going to play and their formation helped them to get a win I think – the way that they played and the way that they had set out their team. I don’t think anyone in our team really can say that they deserve pass marks from that game,” the 29-year-old said. “Every other game that we’ve played this campaign, you’ve obviously got a few players who, regardless if the whole team isn’t firing on all cylinders, if you’ve got a few players who are going to do something out of the ordinary or show a bit of magic or someone getting on the end of something, just that night we didn’t have it.
“I think both teams are very similar on paper but that night Scotland probably just played better than us.”
“I think we probably just have to play the way we can, the way we play in training. The way we play in training you think ‘if we just bring that into a game’. It doesn’t always work like that right enough. The game against Scotland, we never really had possession of the ball, in the first half especially I remember.
“We only really came into it when we started going a bit more direct in the second half. Things bouncing for us, getting flick-ons and stuff. It’s all about which way you want to play I suppose, if you get joy from that but, I suppose that was always the problem under Trap [Trapattoni], wasn’t it? Everyone didn’t like the way we played but it kind of got us the results, didn’t it?
“All the lads get the ball down and play football in training,” he continued. “When it comes to a game, there are certain games we’ve done it and certain games we haven’t and, in the Scotland game, we couldn’t do it. I think they stifled us pretty well and in the way they pressed us. But I’m looking at our team against Scotland and I’m thinking that we’ve got the better players, I think anyway. But they looked the better team, they looked more comfortable in possession, they looked like they knew what they were doing.”
McGeady has found game time hard to come by at Everton though. Injury hasn’t helped his cause but he has been left on the bench more often than he’s used to and he admits that he hasn’t had a season like the one just passed.
It’s a source of comfort for him that he comes back to Ireland training at the end of every term and he’s under the eye of Martin O’Neill. A coach he’s familiar with and one who obviously rates him. Highly.
“He’s always been great with me ever since I was a young lad at Celtic,” the winger stated. “Don’t get me wrong, he can give me a kick up the arse as well. Especially in training and things like that. You know what he’s like, he will say things with a bit of humour but it’s got a meaning to it as well if he’s cracking a joke with you. But of course it’s good to come in and play for a manager who’s got faith in you, it let’s you be confident and it let’s you express yourself more as opposed to trying to impress someone.”
But with a ‘difficult season’ behind him, the player doesn’t really have time to feel sorry for himself. No-one does. There’s a game coming up on Saturday week and that’s all that matters right now. Anything after that can wait.
Any thoughts coming up to it can be summed up with three simple words.
“We must win.”
If not for the Euros sake but for Aiden McGeady’s sake.
