Dunphy is a skinny, little RAT. Dunphy explains and has a dig at Hunt !

[stew]

Farrandeelin, Ireland probably should have seen out the win, but if every team of average footballers was capable of playing complete shut-out football then the games just wouldn't be worth attending. I'd credit the Italians with a brilliant breakaway goal consisting of three perfect passes.

Dunphy though, who spent most of his life as a mediocre footballer, should have a better understanding of just how much effort it takes for mediocre players to compete with classy players. Instead of hammering Ireland as disgraceful, the truth about that match is that Ireland drew with a team infinitely better than them. That deserves credit.

Let me get this straight, Irelands current squad played the current world champions not once but twice in this group and they drew both times and in Dunphy's mind this was a disgraceful performance? The man is on drugs.

As a defensive player when I looked at the Italy goal I could not understand the fact that Ireland were thin at the back in that situation, not only that but the communication was direbetween kepper and defenders, and TWO Irish players failed to close down the goalscorer, that was pathetic but I think that if someone had offered ireland and her supporters two draws with Italy before a ball was kicked they would have jumped all over it.

[anglocelt39]

Few more viewers Wednesday night, few more freelance speaking gigs, few more copies of the Star sold, job done

[imtommygunn]

Dunphy has taken this whole "sensationalist" business too far. He makes himself look nothing more than an idiot.

Dunphy lost the run of himself a long time ago - "Sure he ran off with a young thing". When he is bringing peoples personal lives into it he is bang out of order. IMO he should have been struck off from RTE for that comment.

I wouldn't watch or listen to him at all.

[J70]

dunphy was wrong to call the 2-2 draw with the current world champions as shameful. if we had drawn 2-2 at home to the Faroes in a vital qualifier now that would have been shameful. hunt is also wrong by calling him what he did. i guess 2 wrongs dont make a right.

This is why I was surprised. I haven't followed the national team that closely as its not too easy to do from the states, but from looking at the players we have, I would have thought we were punching way above our weight to be in the position we are in at the moment. Plus, we were only injury time away from winning the bloody match! (Not good getting caught on the break like that in those circumstances though)

[Gaoth Dobhair Abu]

dunphy was wrong to call the 2-2 draw with the current world champions as shameful. if we had drawn 2-2 at home to the Faroes in a vital qualifier now that would have been shameful. hunt is also wrong by calling him what he did. i guess 2 wrongs dont make a right.

This is why I was surprised. I haven't followed the national team that closely as its not too easy to do from the states, but from looking at the players we have, I would have thought we were punching way above our weight to be in the position we are in at the moment. Plus, we were only injury time away from winning the bloody match! (Not good getting caught on the break like that in those circumstances though)

J70 far from punching above our weight, we were bloody unlucky not to be topping the group.
Points thrown away against Italy twice and Bulgaria twice and Montenegro.

But sadly given FIFA's bias towards the "bigger" nations, it looks difficult for Ireland to get to South Africa.

[Rav67]

I not a huge Dunphy, but calling someone a skinny little rat is poor IMO. No one ever criticised any of these players personnally just there football performance. Calling Dunphy that is personal and I think uncalled for. Criticising Dunphys analysis would be better.

I like the fact that they aren't scared to say what they think, rather than just sitting there all nice like the BBC and Sky, however do you not remember Dunphy getting personal over the Keane leaving Utd saga, in which he announced an English journalist had no right to question Keane cos the fella left his wife and kids and ran off with 'a young one' as he announced on live TV, far worse than what anyone has ever said about Dunphy.

Dunphy had a vested interest in Keane, they had a 'bromance' going on for a while because all Dunphy did was kiss Keane's arse for many years, Keane could do nothing wrong and that quote about little, although factually correct was unprofessional, emotional and was deviod of any semblance of journalistic integrity.

I wonder what his view of Keane is nowadays? 

The love was all one way, Dunphy needed Keane and went on like they were best pals and eulogised him constantly.  When Keane left Utd at 34 Dunphy I remember gave his big speech about how Keane was a great patriot blah blah and also how he was still one of the best in Europe which was ludicrous.

Keane on the other hand never had anything to say about Dunphy, who was just an irrelevance to him.  I think this is why the romance ultimately failed.  When Keane went into management and gave the standard give-nothing-away media interview on a few occasions Dunphy said he had become a "talking head."  The fall-out followed on from that.

[boojangles]

Dunphy is a pervert and a low-life.You cannot take such a man serious. His days at RTE should have been numbered years ago. Its all sensationalise and exaggeration with Eamon.He appeals to gutter trash.
I had to rub my eyes in disbelief when I seen him on that new Pat Kenny show a few weeks back discussing NAMA and the Economy. The RTE chiefs that put him there need their head examined.
A failed footballer who never managed anybody,couldn't even manage his own life FFS and he is lecturing on the state of affairs in the country. Licence Payers money going on that Creep.
Hunt was being nice to him.

[J70]

dunphy was wrong to call the 2-2 draw with the current world champions as shameful. if we had drawn 2-2 at home to the Faroes in a vital qualifier now that would have been shameful. hunt is also wrong by calling him what he did. i guess 2 wrongs dont make a right.

This is why I was surprised. I haven't followed the national team that closely as its not too easy to do from the states, but from looking at the players we have, I would have thought we were punching way above our weight to be in the position we are in at the moment. Plus, we were only injury time away from winning the bloody match! (Not good getting caught on the break like that in those circumstances though)

J70 far from punching above our weight, we were bloody unlucky not to be topping the group.
Points thrown away against Italy twice and Bulgaria twice and Montenegro.

But sadly given FIFA's bias towards the "bigger" nations, it looks difficult for Ireland to get to South Africa.

Yes, I heard that they changed the rules midrace and decided to seed the teams. It will be tough all right.

Still don't understand how we did so well with those players though! I suppose, like the Greeks in '04, organization and knowledgeable leadership goes a long way!

[mountainboii]

dunphy was wrong to call the 2-2 draw with the current world champions as shameful. if we had drawn 2-2 at home to the Faroes in a vital qualifier now that would have been shameful. hunt is also wrong by calling him what he did. i guess 2 wrongs dont make a right.

This is why I was surprised. I haven't followed the national team that closely as its not too easy to do from the states, but from looking at the players we have, I would have thought we were punching way above our weight to be in the position we are in at the moment. Plus, we were only injury time away from winning the bloody match! (Not good getting caught on the break like that in those circumstances though)

J70 far from punching above our weight, we were bloody unlucky not to be topping the group.
Points thrown away against Italy twice and Bulgaria twice and Montenegro.

But sadly given FIFA's bias towards the "bigger" nations, it looks difficult for Ireland to get to South Africa.

Yes, I heard that they changed the rules midrace and decided to seed the teams. It will be tough all right.

Still don't understand how we did so well with those players though! I suppose, like the Greeks in '04, organization and knowledgeable leadership goes a long way!

At the risk of sounding Dunphyesque, I don't think it deserves such high praise. Considering the players available, I think Ireland have probably went round in slightly better than par in this campaign.

We beat Georgia and Cyprus twice, but they're two teams we should always be beating. We drew with Montenegro, which in hindsight probably wasn't a great result, even though at the time it was generally applauded as Montenegro were expected to be more competitive than they actually turned out to be. The draw with a very understrength, bad Bulgarian team in Dublin was a poor enough result. The draw away to Bulgaria was alright. The draw in Italy was a great result on paper, but the fact that Italy played 85 minutes of that game with 10 men has been conveniently overlooked by some. The draw at the weekend was a decent enough result too.

The reason we've finished so comfortably in second has a lot to do with Bulgaria's incompetence, there are very few other qualifying groups in which the third place team has performed as poorly. All in all a good solid campaign, but not really worthy of lavish praise.

Also getting a wee bit annoyed at the constant referencing of Italy as world champions. This is a fairly specious description, a title won 3 and a half years ago is not an accurate indicator of current form and ability, especially as so many of the Italian team that won that competition are no longer playing international football or are now well past their best (Totti, Toni, Cannavaro, Materazzi, Gattuso, Perotta, Del Piero, etc.). Italy are barely in the top 6 in Europe now, never mind top of the world.

[stephenite]

Dunphy is a pervert and a low-life.You cannot take such a man serious. His days at RTE should have been numbered years ago. Its all sensationalise and exaggeration with Eamon.He appeals to gutter trash.
I had to rub my eyes in disbelief when I seen him on that new Pat Kenny show a few weeks back discussing NAMA and the Economy. The RTE chiefs that put him there need their head examined.
A failed footballer who never managed anybody,couldn't even manage his own life FFS and he is lecturing on the state of affairs in the country. Licence Payers money going on that Creep.
Hunt was being nice to him.

Well said - the man's a drunk

[SLIGONIAN]

As I said before Im no fan of Dunphy, but i see people saying Italy are world champions, which is fair but wasnt that 3.5yrs ago? Theryre a pale shadow of that side. I dont rate this current Italy side at all. In fairness to Bulgaria they were missing martin petrov for a year of the campaign. Its not been the toughest group. The late leveller was lucky IMO the first pass out of defence was fluke and took our whole midfield out of the game, after that it was open for them with players overlapping. Calling shameful is rubbish becuase I thought we did well and gave as good as we got. Dunphy is a ranter and gets carried away with his analysis, sometimes I agree most times disagree but I dont think hes a skinny little rat. Ive never taken him seriously, he lost credibility with over the keane saga, so I guess thats why he doesnt bother me as much as the rest of ye.

France, Russia and Portugal are no great shakes at the minute either. So I think we have a decent chance of qualifying no matter who we play. Whya are we so afraid? Lets stick it to FIFA by knocking one of them out. Lets turn it into a positive instead of whinging about it.

[orangeman]

RTÉ football pundit Eamon Dunphy has clarified remarks he made following the Republic of Ireland's draw with Italy last weekend.

A disgruntled Dunphy had used the word 'shameful' in his post-match analysis on RTÉ, and Republic of Ireland international Stephen Hunt, when questioned about Dunphy's comments, labelled the pundit 'a skinny little rat'.

Speaking to RTÉ Sport's Darren Frehill on RTÉ Radio's Morning Ireland, Dunphy offered a further explanation of his comments.

Listen to Eamon Dunphy's Interview Here

'One word was taken out of a 20-minute conversation - the word 'shameful'. It's not an appropriate word to use for the performance (against Italy); what I was referring to was Andy Reid's omission from the squad,' said Dunphy.

'I did use it [the word 'shameful']; it was not the right word to use for the performance. It would be appropriate, I think, to what's happening to Andy Reid.

'We have to remember all players love playing for their country and he must be very hurt and professionally isolated at the moment. He's playing very well for Sunderland and should be in the Irish squad.'

Dunphy continued: 'I think we played very poorly for at least an hour-and-a-quarter of the game. They didn't pass the ball well. Italy controlled the football.

'What was depressing about it. was that there doesn't seem to be any attempt by the Irish team when they have the ball to play football and to pass the ball the way you should do at international level.

'I would say the word 'shameful' in the context I used on Saturday was wrong. I've no problem admitting that.'
In reference to Hunt's comments about him being 'a skinny little rat', Dunphy quipped: 'Stephen Hunt's not exactly Mr Universe himself!'

[johnneycool]

Sometimes Dunphy suffers from the English commentators disease of bigging up players who're nothing more than average. All of a sudden Andy Reid is a world beater so expect a big money transfer to Real Madrid in the January transfer window for Mr Reid. 
One of Dunphy's biggest moans was that the Ireland midfield couldn't keep possession and to a certain degree he had a point, but Italy even if they aren't as good as they were have much better footballers than Ireland so that is to be expected. Ireland feed off scraps and have done even through the successful world cup and European campaigns of the recent past. The group stages of Italia 90 consisted of three boring 1-1 draws before a draw after extra time led to the penalty shoot-out.

Trappatoni, just like Charlton is cutting his cloth to suit.

Ireland as a team are fairly well organised as individually they'd not compete with any of the better European teams so to get two draws against Italy was a good return considering the team is made up of lads playing for Stoke, Fulham, Villa, Hull, Blackburn, etc with only O'Shea and Given plying their trade at the competitive end of the English premiership

[The Watcher Pat]

Dunphy is a pervert and a low-life.You cannot take such a man serious. His days at RTE should have been numbered years ago. Its all sensationalise and exaggeration with Eamon.He appeals to gutter trash.
I had to rub my eyes in disbelief when I seen him on that new Pat Kenny show a few weeks back discussing NAMA and the Economy. The RTE chiefs that put him there need their head examined.
A failed footballer who never managed anybody,couldn't even manage his own life FFS and he is lecturing on the state of affairs in the country. Licence Payers money going on that Creep.
Hunt was being nice to him.

Well said - the man's a drunk

He probably has forgot what he said, Its like a guy in my work. Comes ask's a question, I tell him the answer. Ten mins later he asks the same question, tell him the answer again, same thing ten mins later. So i ask one of the guys " is he for real?" Turns out he's drunk all the time and forgets everything he's been told!

I think Dunphy's drunk most of the time as well..... He looks like Dunphy too!

[Rav67]

7 of the players that featured in the 2006 World Cup Final played in Croker on Saturday night. The Italian goalkeeper and back four came from AC Milan and Juventus, Buffon is arguably the world's best keeper, Pirlo as good a midfielder as anyone etc, so this was no medicore Italian team, and they were looking for a result as well. Also it would hardly be the biggest surprise in the World if they retained the trophy next summer (discount their 2008 Euro campaign and thus year's Confederation Cup)

The Irish performance was on a par with any of the halcyon days of yore and for anyone to rubbish it, is ludicrous, be they in RTE studios or on this board.

Exactly- how many Ireland players would get on the Italy team do you think?
Keane is the only definite I can think of.  Cases could be made for 1 or 2 others but not many.