It would probably be true to say that James McClean has, down the years, divided opinion. Take 2017 when he won RTÉ’s Sportsperson of the Year award. Close to 20 per cent of the members of the public who voted gave him the nod, the rest were largely mystified by the choice. Not least Paul O’Donovan, Katie Taylor and Joe Canning fans.
“WHAT DID McCLEAN WIN IT FOR?? NOT WEARING A FECKIN’ POPPY?,” as one Tweeter asked, while another, as Ruaidhrí Croke wrote at the time, came to this rather withering conclusion: “Brexit, Donald Trump and now James McClean winning sportsperson of the year. Democracy ain’t working.”
His response to the fuss, which included journalist Paul Kimmage suggesting that the only people who would agree with the vote would be the player’s Ma and Da, was, well, the most James McClean thing ever.
“Paul and whoever else is upset about it, as I go shine my award I apologise sincerely for not giving a toss,” he tweeted.
As he told Patrick Kielty on The Late Late Show a couple of weeks ago, “you can shout abuse at me all day long and I’ll fight fire with fire”. And that he has done for over a decade, most notably in response to the abuse he has endured in England in response to his refusal to wear a poppy on his shirt around Remembrance Day in November.
A fair chunk of the four-part Netflix series on David Beckham that was released this week deals with the abuse he suffered from football fans during spells in his career, the worst of it coming after he was sent off at the 1998 World Cup.
None of it was pretty, parts of it grim, and if McClean has had the chance to watch it, he’d no doubt sympathise on a human level. But he’d probably conclude that he’d need a lot more than a four-parter to detail what he’s gone through since he first declined to wear the poppy in 2012. Unending bile from the stands, largely of the sectarian kind, with a few death threats thrown in.
But when life would have been a whole lot easier for the fellah if he’d backed down and just worn the damn thing, he stood his ground, eloquently explaining his stance in a 2014 letter to Dave Whelan, the chairman of Wigan Athletic for whom McClean was then playing.
“If the poppy was a symbol only for the lost souls of World War I and II, I would wear one,” he wrote, but growing up in Derry, where memories of Bloody Sunday are “ingrained into us from birth”, it had “come to mean something very different”. “I am very proud of where I come from and I just cannot do something that I believe is wrong. In life, if you’re a man you should stand up for what you believe in.”
The abuse, of course, kept on coming, but it at least gave pause to some – only some – who had dismissed him as just an air-headed footballer. He’s anything but, he’s thoughtful and principled and has grown in to a fine young man, as evidenced most recently by how he spoke about his autistic daughter and how he too had been diagnosed with the condition. A measure of him too is how he donates generously to causes back home, among them homeless and addiction charities.
Only Robbie Keane, Shay Given, John O’Shea and Kevin Kilbane have won more Republic of Ireland caps than him, and while he was no Messi, few - maybe any - played with a greater passion for their country.
True, he hasn’t always helped himself and possibly holds the record for deleted social media accounts. Like after he posted that photo of him in a balaclava with his two young children looking up at him. “Today’s School lesson – History,” he typed, alongside an ROFL emoji. For that he was fined two weeks’ wages by Stoke City and agreed to delete his Instagram account.
But it was subsequently reactivated and it was there that he announced on Thursday morning that he would be retiring from international football after next month’s friendly against New Zealand.
Only Robbie Keane, Shay Given, John O’Shea and Kevin Kilbane have won more Republic of Ireland caps than him, and while he was no Messi, few – maybe any – played with a greater passion for their country. And you could tell he loved every minute being out on that pitch.
“I gave absolutely everything I had of myself to ensure that I did the jersey, the fans and the country proud, and know that I never took it for granted. I hope that showed,” he wrote.
It did. As honest on the pitch as off it. Go well, James McClean.
