Martin O'Neill believes tonight's Ireland captain has matured. Why?
It’s at least three months since he’s had another tattoo.
James McClean can be said to wear his heart on his sleeves, but he also takes care as to what appears beneath them. Included on a body sprawled with ink are the lyrics to The Town I Loved So Well, and an image of the famous gable wall that bears the words "You Are Now Entering Free Derry".
That affinity with his hometown has always been part of McClean's growing up. He learned his craft on the city's streets, and lit that irascible spark that has propelled him to the top half of the Premier League and on the verge of fifty international caps.
The city taught him sheer, hard work, and if you talk to anyone about James McClean, his work rate will be among the first of the listed virtues. Andrew 'Jacko' Smyth, who works behind the scenes with West Brom as their kit man, admits that "it's his work rate that has him where he is; it's his will to win that has him where he is".
Eamon Zayed, who played with McClean at Derry, says that he "had talent, but he worked his balls off to get where he wanted to get - and that's playing for Ireland and in England".
Once he broke into the Derry City team for example, McClean ran to the training ground, stayed late, and ran home. Every single day.
That work rate imbued in him at home is as strong as ever in England, and so is his relationship with home. McClean remains incorrigibly himself in English football. If it got him this far, why change?
McClean says that most footballers dutifully act off a script that comes with their contracts, something he won't countenance. It may have made things easier for him, but in an industry as superficial and transient as football, McClean's insistence on being himself is a radical act.
It has caused him trouble, and led to the curdling of his Sunderland experience. Celebrated as the club's Young Player of the Year in his first year, spat at as he left:
I was coming back from one of the last games of the season, and like I usually do, I always take my home jersey home, because you never know who needs one or will ask for one. I gave it to a kid outside the stadium, and his father took it off him and threw it back at me. And then, on the way home, my car was stopped at traffic lights. So my car's here, and there's another car there [beside him]. The guy rolled down the window, and he spat at me, and drove off.
My missus was in the car with me, and she was pregnant at the time. I was thinking, 'I'm about to bring a baby into the world, I don't need all this hassle'. I went to see Paolo [Di Canio] the next day, and said 'look, I think it's time I moved on', and I explained the situation.
It all stemmed from McClean's refusal to wear a poppy for Remembrance Sunday. McClean says he was "hung out to dry" by the Sunderland press team: they announced that he would not wear a poppy, but did not allow him explain why he refused to. That opportunity was afforded to him at Wigan, and an eloquent open letter appeared on the club's website. In the letter, McClean wrote that he could not honour all of the British soldiers who have been killed, as that would be disrespectful to the Irish killed on Bloody Sunday in Derry.
The whole saga is dredged up annually around this time of year by the British media, to the extent that the first sign of Christmas is an article in the Daily Mail stating that McClean wouldn't be wearing a poppy that weekend.
He still regularly incurs the wrath of opposition supporters, too, but it doesn't bother him, according to Smyth:
You can see it in some games. I do be laughing, he'd be going over to take a corner and the fans would be giving him abuse and you can see that he loves all that. It's gas, he is probably one of the most popular guys in the dressing room, he gets on with everybody. He comes across as being serious, but of course you can't have a bit of a laugh and a joke with him.
And now, McClean is the captain of his country, and one of its most important players. In this qualifying campaign, he has turned two points into six for Ireland, and is one of the few players that can be relied upon to repeat the trick against Austria next weekend.
He remains prone to rash challenges and silly bookings, and it is perhaps the eradicating of these that O'Neill refers to when he wants McClean to show greater maturity.
But tonight's Irish captain will wear the armband because he realised from an early age that he was better off to be himself.
That's maturity, and it's written across his chest.
