WHO would've thought a post-match Big Mac meal would play a part in hastening the departure of Aiden McGeady at Sunderland Football Club?
The former Republic of Ireland winger and team-mate Chris Maguire were 'caught' eating in the fast food chain just hours after Sunderland had lost 1-0 to Gillingham.
'McGeady in Big Mac storm.'
Welcome to the modern age where social media lowers the tone and occasionally infects the prided standards of the mainstream media.
Social media is nothing without a bit of hysteria. The photograph taken and posted on social media of McGeady and Maguire hunched over their meals was enough to send some Sunderland fans over the edge.
They've watched their team drop like a stone from the lofty environs of the Premier League, down through the Championship, and still falling in League One.
It's hard to escape the conclusion that a bit of mismanagement at board level is at play to allow such a big club like Sunderland to fall from grace so spectacularly.
The constant rumblings of discontent among the stands suggests too that while McGeady will be moved on in January, manager Phil Parkinson might suffer the same fate before the end of the season.
Sunderland look like a club that's totally unmanageable with no vision as to how they start climbing the leagues again.
Parkinson has been criticised by a section of supporters for playing 'dinosaur' football and the thinking is McGeady's wing wizardry simply doesn't fit that template.
He's also estimated to be earning £30,000 per week and the club needs to get its biggest earner off the wage bill going forward.
Both McGeady and Maguire were unused subs in the 1-0 defeat to Gillingham on December 7.
It probably wasn't the wisest move to be sitting eating junk food after a loss that was almost certainly going to be circulated on the pest that is social media, but it was hardly a sacking offence.
And, in any case, Maguire's Big Mac meal didn't stop him from starting in the 1-1 draw with Blackpool the following week. McGeady was dropped from the panel altogether and has been told he can leave the club.
Regardless of whether it was his big wages, his fluctuating form, or the lukewarm relationship he shares with the manager, his imminent departure from the north east club makes you wonder what the winger’s footballing epitaph will be when he finally hangs up his boots.
At Celtic, he was often sensational, albeit with a fair amount of headless chicken performances. But at least McGeady was at the club where creativity and wing play was in its DNA.
In a surprise move, he moved to Spartak Moscow in 2010 where he probably stayed a couple of years too long.
On the international scene, he played his best football under Giovanni Trapattoni between 2008 and 2013.
He was the one creative gene in a thoroughly average team that reached Euro 2012 and went desperately close to 2010 World Cup qualification.
Back at club level, he showed glimpses of his undoubted ability with Everton but he totalled just over 30 games for the Merseyside club and probably deserved more appearances before being loaned out to Sheffield Wednesday and Preston NE.
And just when it seemed Trapattoni had squeezed what there was out of the Scottish-born Irish international, his old mentor Martin O'Neill managed to get a tune out of him, with his two goals against Georgia back in September 2014 the stand-out performance.
His last involvement on the international stage was in the Republic’s ill-fated World Cup play-off defeat to Denmark in late 2017.
His club form for Sunderland at the start of 2019 was encouraging, and good enough for him to be on Mick McCarthy’s radar.
He was named in McCarthy’s provisional squad for Ireland’s opening Euro 2020 tie against Gibraltar but didn’t make the final cut.
After all, McCarthy had James McClean, Robbie Brady, Callum O’Dowda, Callum Robinson and Sean Maguire jockeying for wide berths in the side.
And yet, McGeady is easily the best dribbler among them.
At this stage it would take an injury list of disastrous proportions for McCarthy to lift the phone to McGeady to bail his country out against Slovakia in the Euro 2020 play-off next March.
That ship has well and truly sailed.
At 33 and on the look-out for a new club - undoubtedly in the lower leagues - McGeady probably imagined a different, more romantic end to a career that promised so much in the early years.
Due to over-coaching and negative tactics, wingers like Aiden McGeady are on the verge of extinction. And the lower you go, the more difficult it is to play on the wing and remain relevant in the modern game.
In saying all that McGeady had the potential to have a very good career at Premier League level - but it never materialised.
Looking back, Spartak Moscow still looks like the wrong turn.
On his day, McGeady was a special talent. But there simply weren't enough of those days.
He tallied 93 caps but a lack of goals was always his Achilles heel.
He could’ve done more with the talent he had.
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IT was a nice surprise to bump into two heroes of mine - Kevin Madden and Kevin Brady - in a Belfast city centre pub last weekend.
Antrim’s class of 2000 - Anto Finnegan, Sean McGreevy, Peter McCann, Joe Quinn, Gearoid Adams, Dermot Niblock, Gavin Bell and manager Brian White among them - were enjoying their Christmas night out.
It was approaching 11.30pm and the glass-slippered Madden and Brady were clock-watching for fear of missing the last bus home.
Many of that squad began playing together in the mid-to-late 1990s before they claimed that historic victory over Down at Casement Park in 2000.
Managed supremely by Brian White, Antrim were the tightest of crews back then and had more footballing ability than they were ever given credit for.
The fact that they still meet up on an annual basis after all these years says something for the times that they shared while playing for Antrim.
I remember asking Anto Finnegan would he like to have played in the modern era, with all the improvements in Gaelic football, from tactics to planning, to player welfare and advances in strength and conditioning, he immediately replied no because he enjoyed the era he played in and the team-mates he had and friendships he gained.
Nearly two decades on, the Antrim boys are having Christmas dinner, sharing a drink and memories, and probably cracking the same jokes.
They wouldn’t have it any other way, which makes you wonder how many of the modern-day county teams will be meeting up in 20 years’ time and sharing memories…
