“What does this mean for English football?” “I don’t know, we’re all Irish here.” Arsenal manager, Terry Neill, when asked about England’s failure to qualify for the 1978 World Cup. For a time, the scouts were almost as renowned as the players they discovered. They were certainly viewed as seers with preternatural levels of wisdom and authority. Their names carried weight on the football fields of Dublin (and it was usually only Dublin). Billy Behan, Noel McCabe, Bill Darby. They were the men who sent Paul McGrath, Kevin Moran, Liam Brady, Frank Stapleton, Roy Keane and others to England. “If…

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