A long night in Lansdowne. It ended with long faces and soon there will be long knives. The Republic of Ireland crashed out of the World Cup last night. The three-year tenure of manager Brian Kerr almost certainly died with Irish hopes, writes Tom Humphries at Lansdowne Road
A scoreless draw was enough to usher the Swiss into the play-off stages of qualification, dumping Ireland into fourth place in the group. A French win over Cyprus in Paris saw the France qualify automatically from Group Four.
The Swiss came to town with the comfort of having seen off the last Irish manager, Mick McCarthy, when they were here three years ago. Last night's result pretty much does the same for Kerr. It was Ireland's worst qualification finish since 1986.
It's hard to be precise about the moment when it happened but somehow the idea of Kerr and Ireland being a fairytale marriage lost its appeal for a lot of people. As the manager was coursed through the pages of various newspapers, so his team's performances became unhelpfully tepid. The seeds of last night's failure were sown in poor performances earlier in the campaign.
Kerr finished the night looking a forlorn figure as his players again failed to make his case. It was even suggested yesterday that Roy Keane would fly in to give an impassioned speech to the team beforehand because the millionaires might be scared of him. There was no sign of Keane, but the performance early on suggested that perhaps there had at least been an impassioned text
(Gd lck 2 U's?). The Irish went to work with verve and hunger.
With the raucous Lansdowne Road crowd acting like a cattle prod on our lethargic heroes they began the game at a tempo which we feared their metabolism couldn't sustain. The Swiss had much the same suspicions and parried Ireland's early blows nonchalantly. Indeed, the best chance of the first half fell to them.
The serenely named Tranquillo Barnetta slung a lazy cross to Alexander Frei who was criminally unimpeded as he headed the ball wide - also criminally - of Shay Given's goal. For penance, he held his head in his hands for quite some time.
Ireland saw much of their ambition broken down by the concession of frees. In the end, though, our lack of creativity proved fatal. Clear-cut chances on goal were rare as hens' teeth. A highlights reel would show good Swiss chances while the Irish pinballed around the Swiss area.
The ramifications go beyond the cancellation of Irish plans to annex Germany next summer with beery bonhomie and lots of SSIA money. We may lose a manager and we will certainly lose our status as third seeds in the group stages of competitions and become fourth seeds. We get weaker, the gradient gets steeper.