Helping Hand with a chilling cautionary tale

Ireland's former manager knows all about rejection. It nearly killed him. Now he is advising the young about the pitfalls

Even dedicated followers of football might struggle to recall the identity of the man in charge of the Republic of Ireland team immediately before Jack Charlton took over and revolutionised the sport's fortunes. His name was Eoin (pronounced Owen) Hand and less than eight years after resigning as manager he almost drank himself to death.

Today he has an important role at the Football Association of Ireland again in his native Dublin, working on career guidance for Irish youngsters rejected by English clubs, while also acting as a radio summariser for international matches on RTE. His tale is a salutary one, above all for those optimists heading for the World Cup as international managers who will be out of a job before a new season has begun.

Unlike both Charlton and McCarthy, Hand was a figure of low profile who took the country's top football job at an early age – 34 – only four years after winning the last of his 20 caps. The best of his five seasons in charge was the first, which began with victory over Holland, the World Cup runners-up, and ended in an achingly narrow failure to qualify for the 1982 finals. The FAI were slowly adopting more professional attitudes, but Hand found it hard going, especially while "paid peanuts" on a part-time basis: "I tried to improve things off the park, in choice of hotels and so on, but still had some horrific experiences," he said.

Among them was May 1982, when the FAI insisted on a tour to South America, including Argentina, just as the Falklands War was at its height. "There I was ringing managers like Ron Atkinson at Manchester United and Keith Burkinshaw at Spurs asking to take their players to Argentina."

The answers consisted of two words, the second being "off", while the FAI told him he was not a politician but a football manager who should get on with his job. "The Argentina game was eventually called off, but I ended up taking a Mickey Mouse team to play away to Brazil, the best side in the world at the time, and losing 7-0, the biggest defeat in Irish history."

After failing to come through difficult groups in the next two major championships, Hand resigned, having "learnt an awful lot" but lost plenty as well, like the sportswear business he tried to run for some sort of financial security while working a full day on football business.

Financial reward came belatedly with a lucrative coaching job in Saudi Arabia, then four years at Huddersfield Town, from 1988-92, and a difficult period as manager of a South African club, complete with death threats.

Back in Ireland there more such threats, but from within an increasingly tortured soul: "The South African job had gone bad, my marriage had broken up and I was putting myself under so much pressure I just stopped eating and started drinking. I wasn't an alcoholic, but it was excessive drinking – lager and pints of Guinness – and I developed acute pancreatitis. I was in a coma and at one stage actually received the last rites. When you're an international manager at such a young age, it's very hard to adjust afterwards. Because you can't get any higher than that."

Linking up with RTE was an important step back to normality and a renewed capacity for a hard day's work: at 11 o'clock last Thursday night, after working for radio at the Republic's home game against Nigeria, he was meeting the parents of a 15-year-old wanted by an English club. He is dismayed by the antics of some clubs and has watched too many young boys cross the Irish Sea with stars in their eyes, and return, rejected, with tears in them. "You have a boy who's been told from the age of 10 that he's going to be a great footballer. So he chooses a top English club, he's gone away to be a star, and all of a sudden at 19 he's told 'Sorry, son, it's not happening, go back to Ireland'. That's a testing time for him. He still needs the dedication and application to make it over here. That's where we can help."

The FAI, working closely with the Professional Footballers' Association and the Premier League, can offer advice both before and after such traineeships and together they are sponsoring a pioneering six-week residential course for so-called "returnees".

So what of those who have made it, the Keanes and Duffs and Stauntons, and their prospects over the next month? "If we keep players fit, I believe we can get out of the group, and then have no reason to fear either Spain or Paraguay in the next round. But Cameroon will be a very, very tough game to start."

And if Mick McCarthy finds the pressure building too alarmingly, he should think of his predecessor-but-one and take several deep breaths.