Ireland goal hero James McClean has a troubled past which splits opinion and makes him a target for the boo boys

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James McClean will be booed. At some point in West Bromwich Albion’s next match at Leicester City on Monday, McClean will either start or come off the bench and the mention of his name will provoke a loud, negative reaction.

McClean was an Irish hero in Cardiff on Monday night. He was the back page image of Irish success, he was the ‘Dragon Slayer’, he was the family man running over to kiss his wife Erin in the crowd.

This was James McClean, footballer, the teetotal fitness freak who goes for early morning runs on his own at the Irish team hotel, Martin O’Neill’s goalscoring stamina man.

James McClean was an Irish hero in Cardiff on Monday night - but he will be booed next week

 McClean scored the winner as Ireland beat Wales to reach the 2018 World Cup play-offs

After scoring in Cardiff, McClean ran to kiss his wife Erin in the crowd in celebration

This was McClean, the character, who turned up uninvited at a Down’s syndrome boys club the day after a friendly in Dublin in March. The club had put out an appeal for opposition. They got an Irish international.

Yet on Monday McClean will be back in his day-to-day role as Irish republican, non-poppy-wearing bogeyman. He will be booed.

There was some of that in Cardiff and while partly it is pantomime supporter jeering, a habit, plenty of it is sincere. Because even in a climate of social media vitriol, McClean is on a different level.

McClean however is a pantomime villain for many supporters due to his views on the poppy

In 2012, when he informed his then employers, Sunderland, that he would not be wearing a shirt in November with a poppy sewn on to it, McClean became more than just another Irish player ‘across the water’ trying to make a living in Britain he could not at home.

That day at Goodison Park McClean could have chosen to follow Sunderland team-mate John O’Shea, or Everton’s Seamus Coleman, now McClean’s Irish captain, who both wore poppy-embroidered jerseys. McClean chose otherwise.

But then his Irishness is different from theirs: he comes from Londonderry/Derry, a place where the locals do not even agree on its name. Some jokily opt for ‘Stroke City’ as in Derry-stroke-Londonderry but to McClean his identity is no joke. In a place where Irishness and Britishness are matters of everyday importance, to him the place is very much Derry.

As a Catholic, Irish nationalist brought up on the Creggan, McClean absorbed the city’s modern history even if its worst days were coming to an end when he was born in 1989.

McClean refuses to wear the symbol as he says it disrespects those killed in Bloody Sunday

To him the impact of the Troubles was not something he read about, it was something he knew. One of McClean’s many tattoos is a line from the Phil Coulter lament: The Town I Loved So Well. This is someone whose sporting ambition is to return to Derry City, play for them and manage them.

However in Britain, as in parts of Ireland, McClean is one-dimensional, a divisive representative of a divided city. When, after Sunderland, he joined Wigan and again refused to wear a poppy on his shirt, infuriating owner Dave Whelan, McClean wrote an open letter of explanation:

‘For people from the North of Ireland such as myself, and specifically those in Derry, scene of the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, the poppy has come to mean something very different,’ McClean said.

‘Please understand, Mr Whelan, that when you come from Creggan like myself or the Bogside, Brandywell or the majority of places in Derry, every person still lives in the shadow of one of the darkest days in Ireland’s history - even if, like me, you were born nearly 20 years after the event.

McClean is important for West Brom and will likely figure against Leicester on Monday

‘For me to wear a poppy would be as much a gesture of disrespect for the innocent people who lost their lives in the Troubles - and Bloody Sunday especially - as I have in the past been accused of disrespecting the victims of WWI and WWII. It would be seen as an act of disrespect to those people; to my people.’

If McClean was providing context, he was still provoking boos. Much of it stems from Northern Ireland because what sets McClean apart from Irish players such as Coleman and O’Shea, is that McClean has crossed the Irish border.

Born in Northern Ireland, McClean represented Northern Ireland at youth and Under 21 level. He was even called up by senior manager Nigel Worthington for a Euro 2012 qualifier.

McClean has had run-ins with unsympathetic fans before, including here against Everton

McClean instead waited for the Republic of Ireland to call and when they did, was vocal about his Irishness. Some in the Northern Ireland set-up thought that was not just unnecessary, it was sudden.

It was the volume, the public display, which challenged most. After all, another outstanding Irish performer in Cardiff, Shane Duffy, made exactly the same journey through Northern Ireland’s youth and Under 21 teams before opting for the Republic. Duffy, though, has been quiet.

He, too, comes from Derry/Londonderry, as does Darron Gibson, who followed a similar route. This is Irish football’s new frontier: a teenage goalkeeper is the latest to have played for Northern Ireland and been encouraged to join the Republic. Beyond the boos, the noise, even the result, goals such as McClean’s in Cardiff matter.