JAMES McClean has just enjoyed perhaps the greatest moment of his storied career. His team Wrexham claimed their third promotion in a row and this year’s one was a doozie. He’s now captain of a Championship team about to launch an assault on the Premiership summit – and as if that’s not exciting enough for the Derry player, his team is owned by a couple of Hollywood stars.
I’m very pleased for James. Delighted, in fact, after the amount of abuse he has received in the wake of his 2011 decision to play for the Republic. For make no mistake, that was his crime in the eyes of BBC Ulster, the Belfast Telegraph and the News Letter. The burning enmity that his declaration of allegiance provoked was hung on a number of different hooks and dressed in several different outfits – most of them poppy-red – but there’s nothing that Loyal Ulster hates more than a Lundy and the turncoat has spent 14 years now being subjected to two-footed media jump tackles because he walked away from Parc de Windsor.
BBC Ulster, the BelTel and the News Letter will, of course, deny having an agenda on McClean. They will say that they merely report (year after year after year after year) on his poppy travails and that they keep a close eye on him because, despite his rejection of their favourite team, he’s still a big name locally. Hence the balaclava/tattoo/rebel song/GSTQ stories. And the rest.
Except after the weekend that paper-thin excuse was lifted up and blown away by a light breeze of truth. And that truth was that if those three august organs were serious about their reasons for monitoring James McClean so closely they’d have had something to say about his greatest day. Wouldn’t they? They’d have had at least one of those many pictures I’ve seen online of him with a smile the width of the Clywedog being hosed with Champagne by his teammates and cheered to the rafters by his adoring fans (the Wrexham Ultras aren’t too keen on the royal family either). They would even have sent somebody over to interview him during his finest hour surrounded by his wife and children – a family enjoying a moment of love and belonging after so many years of death threats and hatred.
But no. As far as the Twelfth Triumvirate were concerned, one of their favourite subjects progressing to the cusp of the world’s most lucrative league side-by-side with a couple of Hollywood stars wasn’t worth a word. Or a picture.
What was worth a word was Kneecap, who, we’re told, have been called out by people as distant and diverse as spoon-bender Uri Geller, Taoiseach Michéal Martin, celebrity wife Sharon Osbourne, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, TUV leader Jim Allister and tomato-hurdler Jim Rodgers. With the Wrexham captain in the autumn of his career, there’s a James McClean-shaped hole about to appear in the newspapers and on the airwaves that’s got to be filled somehow.
The question now is, of course, have they finished with James? Come the autumn, or Remembrance Autumn, as it’s known here, will they ignore James with the assiduousness with which they this week ignored his finest moment? Will they finally come to accept that he doesn’t have to pay tribute to the Bloody Sunday perpetrators if he doesn’t want to? Will they do what they should have done years ago and stop painting a ‘Kick Me’ message on the back of the Derry man’s shirt?
No, they won’t. Because the news industry is built on seasons, just as business is. There’s Christmas, of course, when every single thing that happens on this island after Halloween happens “in the mouth of Christmas”, adding a little festive cheer to the doom. Then comes Easter, when every single thing that happens on this island after St Valentine’s Day is either “eggsciting” or “eggscellent”. The marching season starts the day after Easter and culminates in the Twelfth, for which the decks are cleared and glossy pull-outs and lengthy broadcast specials across BBC Ulster, the BelTel and the News Letter invite us to celebrate with them the victory of the reformed faith over the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome. Which is not at all weird. In 2025.
And then it’s a short run-in to the poppy season, which in other parts of our happy kingdom is a time to reflect on the sacrifice of the two wars by putting poppies on anything that moves, but which here is an opportunity to single out public figures who are guilty of Hating Our Troops or Being Catholic in Public. And which here is also an opportunity to pretend that there’s no way anyone could have known framing James McClean as a Foyleside Carlos the Jackal would get him death threats any more than anyone could have known for the past 14 years.
There’s always a chance that Loyal Ulster will still be in a state of incandescent rage over Kneecap by summer’s end and there won’t be enough fury left for James. Which might seem unlikely, especially given that Kneecap have just apologised. But Stephen Nolan’s away on holiday at the moment, and while his stand-ins do their best to replicate his passion for a two-week Donnybrook, they can’t come close to matching his genius for extended vacuity. And you better believe if there’s another angle on Kneecap he’ll find it, even if that angle is more acute than his need for attention.
But unless Kneecap fart on the Glider or commit some other egregious and unforgivable sin, I’m fairly sure that the first light and chilly breeze of autumn will again whisper the name McClean. And not in a good way.
