Appearances can be deceptive. Harry Kane looks so thoroughly English that they should really issue him with a pair of Spitfire pilot’s goggles and a white scarf to wear when he cuts through the air for one of those diving headers. But for those of us watching in Ireland, it’s impossible to forget that the dark spirit of Connemara beats somewhere beneath those three lions on his shirt.
Kane is 27 years old and since his emergence as England’s generational striker, the latest in the line of clean-cut heroes led by Lineker and Shearer and Greaves and Hurst, he has always been relaxed about his Irish roots. Just last month he happily obliged a social media request to wish the students in Clifden community school the best in their Leaving Cert.
He made regular visits to his grandfather's home place in Letterfrack in his younger years. During the 2018 World Cup, locals and tourists gathered in Molly's bar, where the fear an tí had promised a free round on the house every time Kane scored.
He was out seven rounds for the entire bar by the time England exited at the semi-final stage. There's a chance that had Molly's been at liberty to offer the same wheeze for these European championships, they would have been left with a surplus of beer and stout as Kane endured a harrowing goal drought — until Tuesday night's game with Germany when England broke the hex.
The what-if sense about Kane is diluted by his sincere admission that... for all his Irish heritage, his dream was to play for England
So far, this has been the tournament that things have come right, deepening the suspicion that UK prime minister Boris was born under a star that is either lucky or perverse. It would be like Johnson to be in Number 10 when England wins its first major football tournament in half a century.
There might have been a faint chance of Kane playing for Ireland – if the FAI had conscientiously pursued and flattered him and then hurried him towards a senior cap while England slept. But the custodians of English football have become wise to the habit of sons of Barnsley and Preston suddenly popping up in green shirts.
Jack Charlton made an art form of (gruffly) wooing footballers eligible to play for both countries from under the noses of his countrymen. It's hard to picture Kane in a green shirt now that he is so centrally associated with the latest England story. And the what-if sense about Kane is diluted by his sincere admission that there was never any internal conflict with him: for all his Irish heritage, his dream was to play for England.
The decision by Declan Rice, London-born and raised but for five years a regular in Ireland underage teams, left a bitter taste in the mouths of some Irish fans. And it is easy to become wistful about the notion of Rice, Kane and Jack Grealish, another English man raised with a keen awareness of his Irish heritage, as a triangle around which a promising Irish team might have been built.
But watching the role of all three men in England’s exorcism of all those German ghosts, who could blame them? They are English men. They’ve already acquired a memory they will take to their graves and who knows where the next week might bring them?
John Barnes was a streak of excitement and beauty through a poisonous era in English football, a conspicuous target for the national front brigade
When Michael Harry Kane left Letterfrack he was just another among the thousands who sailed to England due to economic impoverishment and necessity. He was buried back in Galway in 2012: a few years too soon to see his grandson assume the fantastical role of which millions of English boys dream. The grandfather belongs to the heroic and unheralded generation of Irish emigrants who slogged in England's cities, who kept the post offices busy sending postal orders back home.
He was clearly one of the lucky ones, raising a family and keeping in touch with home. For there are, in the RTÉ archives, several brilliant radio and television documentaries on the dismal, penurious shadow existences suffered by those generations who fell through the cracks: decades of punishing labour, public house escapism and evenings of lodging house bleakness. The presence of captain ‘Arry stands as a salute to the thousands who went to England and made the best of it so that the next generation – and the generation after that – came to think of the place as home.
On the evening when England beat Germany, John Barnes appeared at Boxpark in Croydon and treated the England fans to his rap segment from World In Motion, the 1990 World Cup song from the genius Mancunian gloomsters New Order. A night later, he popped up on Newsnight, not quite buying the assertion that England 2021 was reflective of a new appreciation for black players like Raheem Sterling and Bukayo Saka.
Barnes was a streak of excitement and beauty through a poisonous era in English football, a conspicuous target for the national front brigade after winning his first England cap at just 19 and scoring one of the great international goals at the Maracana against Brazil, in 1984, when he had it all ahead of him.
He was regally indifferent to the monkey chants and hurled bananas in the seasons when he orchestrated Liverpool’s attack and because England didn’t know how to harness his skills, his international profile never reached the extraordinary levels he exhibited with Watford and Liverpool – and he heard about it from the fans.
Barnes is 57 years old now and played his last game for England in 1995. He’s an active social media presence and a big England cheerleader but when it comes to the issue of race and the national football team, he believes little has changed. When England loses, he argued on Newsnight, the black players aren’t English enough. When England win it’s look how diverse we are now.
Barnes is a brilliant debater and always makes a persuasive case. But could he be out of step? Is there a chance that race and background doesn’t matter as much to England’s younger supporters? The next week will tell that tale.
For thousands of Irish, England became home first by necessity and then by emotion
The current England squad has been a model of togetherness and humility: there hasn’t been a single utterance that could be construed as obnoxious. In a recent interview, Grealish noted that if he wasn’t playing for England then he’d be doing the same as any 25-year-old – in the boozer, having a time. Instead, he reflected, he’s one of a handful of young England players either side of Harry Kane who “in reality could play for most clubs in the world”.
"Myself, Jadon [Sancho], Marcus [Rashford], Raheem [Sterling], Phil Foden and Bukayo [Saka]. It's scary how good us six are. That is not being big headed or nothing. That is just the truth."
The words speak of a young player pulsating with self-belief and faith in the cause. If the England fans ever knew of Grealish’s Irish background, they’ve either forgotten or don’t care. And as the English once more dream of returning to the blue remembered hills of 1966, the fact that half of Gareth Southgate’s squad either have parents or grandparents born outside the country has been celebrated.
If this is to be their summer, then chances are that the grandchildren of Ireland’s emigrants will have a big say. Yes, the groans of dread will be predictably loud and dramatic all over Ireland. But for thousands of Irish, England became home first by necessity and then by emotion.
