We don’t talk about and look at players in football like rugby league does about its players. There’s an understanding in RL that some players are good throughout their whole careers while others reach a high level but only for a small window of their careers.
Highly rated Aussie RL players can get high rep honours for state and country and have very elite stats in the league for, say, three years; then for the last eight years of their career end up playing for an average English side, still a steady player, but not that elite player of that small window.
In football we tend to brush aside players who end up average after having their good window. We have more of “what the hell happened to him?” attitude towards that type of player or even ignore the fact they did once have a good spell in the game.
Ireland is one of these. Maybe not elite, even at his best, but he was a very good Premier League midfielder in a midtable side for a couple of years. Good passer of the ball, some big MOTM performances and scored a few cracking goals.
