Bannon turns back the clock

JAMES TRAYNOR

1 Oct 1990

JIM McLean's new breed, their precocity dampened by Celtic a few days previously, arrived at Tynecastle on Saturday with the sleeves rolled up and determined to prove they can overcome adversity.

They were ambushed by an old head.

After a brief exile in the stiffs, Eamonn Bannon ambled back into Hearts' first team and it was he who scored the only goal of the game, providing the new manager, Joe Jordan, with reason to believe his decision to move back north was not such a bad one after all.

On the other hand, McLean, who saw his team's lead at the top of the premier division cut to one point, might have journeyed back to Dundee pondering the value of the genuine seasoned campaigner.

Someone who has seen it all.

He does have a healthy crop of youngsters, but the one quality they lack, experience, is given only bit by bit as the years progress.

Bannon has so much experience and football wisdom it would make your hair fall out.

Eamonn's did, but any young pup who takes the field thinking he'll show the old-timer how it's done usually ends up bemused by the sheer simplicity and tidiness of Bannon's work.

However, you will hear no foolish talk from Bannon about how fit and healthy he feels.

The years have been kind to him, but his continued survival in a game now being played with a ferocity of pace and tackle has cost him.

A toll has been exacted.

"Sometimes I wake up on a Sunday morning feeling as though I must have been hit by a bus," he said.

"I do need more time to recover now, but that's just the inevitability of getting older."

Bannon has always kept a firm grip on reality and it is his ability to read developing situations accurately which should earn him a place in the return leg of the UEFA Cup first-round tie against Dnepr at Tynecastle on Wednesday night.

Also, it seems to be Jordan's intention to play a back four, which helps Bannon's cause since there should be room for him on the left of a four-man midfield, an area in which he does his best work.

Against United he scuttled back and forth rarely wasting a pass.

Flair is substituted for efficiency and since Jordan wants his team to be cautious but positive against the Russians he is bound to deploy Bannon on his left-sided beat.

It will be a remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of Bannon, who only two weeks ago sat in the dugout at a stadium in the Ukraine with depressing thoughts swirling inside his head.

"I was thinking my career finally had turned full cycle," he said.

"Fourteen years ago, when I was with Hearts first time around, I was No.17 on the bench in an away game against Hamburg and then in Russia the other week, there I was again, No.17 on the bench." However, Jordan, taking charge of the team for the first time, reintroduced Bannon and he responded with another of his uncomplicated, but vitally important displays.

Remarkably, Bannon, who is only half-a-dozen years younger than his manager, continues to get the job done.

He says he's not sure but thinks he has played in 57 European ties.

A few more foreign encounters is one of his priorities and if he continues to perform as he did on Saturday he should meet up with satisfaction before, finally, it is all over.

He will, however, have to be used sparingly and it was a smart move taking him off five minutes before the end against United.

United's keeper Billy Thomson would rather have seen the back of his former team-mate much earlier, however.

Eighteen minutes remained when he moved on to an Iain Ferguson lay-off and from 20-odd yards smacked the ball low towards Thomson's right-hand corner.

The keeper reacted slowly and was beaten.

"It was a pretty good shot," Bannon said, "but I think Billy will be disappointed he didn't get the ball." Bannon was also accurate in his assessment of the game in general when he said it was unlike the normal premier-division game, extremely tactical, as it will be on Wednesday "and, I imagine, probably a bit dull to watch," he added.

The game might have been a slog, but conversing with Bannon never is.

United, despite two successive defeats, have a bundle of exciting youngsters, but the truth is, they don't make them like Bannon any more.

Taken from the Herald