{"id":472920,"date":"2026-05-07T12:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/472920\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T12:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:13:13","slug":"how-on-earth-do-you-get-through-4140-championship-minutes-without-being-booked-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/472920\/","title":{"rendered":"How on earth do you get through 4,140 Championship minutes without being booked? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any season in any league will throw up a remarkable stat or two, but it will surely be hard to top the one produced by the Republic of Ireland<\/a>\u2019s Dara O\u2019Shea<\/a> during Ipswich Town<\/a>\u2019s promotion-winning Championship campaign: he played in every second of their 46 games and didn\u2019t pick up a single yellow card along the way.<\/p>\n

That he achieved the feat while stationed at the centre of his side\u2019s rearguard makes it all the more remarkable \u2013 how on earth do you get through 4,140 minutes of Championship football when you\u2019re the last line of defence without even once incurring the wrath of the referee for a mistimed tackle, a tug of a shirt and or a bit of cranky dissent? <\/p>\n

Hull City\u2019s Matt Crooks certainly couldn\u2019t answer that query. He amassed 13 yellow cards during the season, holding off the challenge, by one, of another nine Championship players for the, well, Ballon d\u2019Bookings. And another 28 hit the double-digit mark in the yellow stakes. <\/p>\n

Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna has put his captain\u2019s outstanding season down to discipline, wiliness and the ability to sniff out danger before it actually presents itself. Echoes of Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson<\/a>\u2019s praise for the 27-year-old Dubliner, who has long since become a fixture at the heart of his defence.<\/p>\n

The most common response from Ipswich fans to the plaudits heaped on O\u2019Shea has been: \u201cI hope we can hold on to him.\u201d When they were relegated in 2024, there was no end of chat about him piquing the interest of some bigger guns, but he stayed put and signed a new five-year contract last summer. <\/p>\n

He has, though, suffered relegation from the Premier League<\/a> with West Brom, Burnley and Ipswich, so if he was to endure the ordeal yet again he might finally decide his footballing life\u2019s far too short for this yo-yo existence. He should avoid Spurs, though.<\/p>\n

Slaven Bilic has had a bit of a yo-yo managerial career himself, but, on reflection, one of his smarter moves was to see the potential in O\u2019Shea. \u201cI am gonna praise him, because I know he ain\u2019t gonna be \u2018big time\u2019,\u201d he said after he gave him his English league debut, for West Brom, back in 2019. \u201cDara is the future. I believe in him. He is a player. I love Dara.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mind you, O\u2019Shea was probably lucky not to have been fired by the club he joined as a 16-year-old from St Kevin\u2019s. Eleven years ago this month, come the end of the English football season, he offered his services to his old GAA club St Jude\u2019s ahead of their Dublin Under-16 B Football Championship final against Parnell\u2019s. If West Brom had found out, smoke would have emitted from their ears.<\/p>\n

Jude\u2019s were, no doubt, happy enough to have taken up their former star player\u2019s offer \u2013 playing at corner-forward in the final, he contributed 3-8 to their 34-point pulverising of Parnell\u2019s, earning himself the player of the match award. Considering he hadn\u2019t played Gaelic football for six months, it was decent going. And he didn\u2019t pick up a card in that match either. <\/p>\n

He was, understandably, emotional after that triumph, as he was after leading Ipswich to promotion. Not as emotional, mind, as Ipswich CEO Mark Ashton, who was filmed singing a tribute to rivals Norwich City\u2019s former part-owner Delia Smith: \u201cShe does meat and potata, we ****ing hate her.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Shea displayed a touch more decorum. \u201cIt means everything,\u201d he said of the club\u2019s promotion. \u201cIt\u2019s what we set out to do at the start of the season. I\u2019m so proud to lead this group of players and lead these people and town back to the Premier League. We\u2019ve got to cherish these moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some season for O\u2019Shea. An ever-present, and just the 4,140 minutes without being booked. Jack Charlton would have been appalled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Any season in any league will throw up a remarkable stat or two, but it will surely be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[108508,18,19,88180,17,6634,132],"class_list":["post-472920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-dara-o-shea","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ipswich-town","tag-ireland","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}