He may be off our TV screens but Eamon Dunphy is still casting his always interesting opinions in audio form nowadays.
Dunphy today appeared on the Second Captains podcast to talk about his retirement as well modern journalism and the current state of the national team.
The former RTE pundit also gave his two cents on the Declan Rice debacle, stating that more work needs to be done in getting players to declare for the Republic:
The buck stops with John Delaney. He should ask Martin O’Neill, “what’s going on here Martin? This is unsatisfactory. Why didn’t we have Declan Rice on the pitch against Moldova for 10 minutes, why didn’t we know about other players, how did we lose Grealish?
There was a thing that Jack (Charlton) did, he went to Oxford to get Ray Houghton, John Aldridge. Jack was very assiduous about that. John Giles got Mark Lawrence in to qualify for Ireland when he was playing for Preston.
It had been going back to my time, Joe Kinnear was a Londoner, I roomed with Joe, he was playing with Spurs, a top-class player, we got him because someone was on that case.
Now no one is on it.
Dunphy also put forward that someone should have intervened with Roy Keane when the assistant manager fell out with Harry Arter and Jon Walters recently.
He went on to say that he doesn't think Keane is 'comfortable' or 'tolerant' around people, citing his multiple issues with Jonathan Walters:
I don’t think he is comfortable around people and tolerant. It’s hard to imagine how you could fall out with John Walters, twice. At Ipswich and then have another go at John a couple of weeks ago.
The 73-year-old then claimed that the Saipan incident changed Keane, and that despite their good working relationship when they were writing Keane's book together there have been 'too many incidents', of Keane's anger getting the better of him:
I think Saipan changed him. I think the fact that he became a national hero to half the country I think affected him to be honest, because I found him very good in my dealings with him and they were over a number of months.
A most delightful man, not a sign of temperament or anything like that, but I think there have been too many incidents...all of that anger isn’t good around the camp.
You can listen to the fascinating interview in full at secondcaptains.com
