There's a lot of blather talked about the glories of soccer, the beauty of the game, the honour of playing for Ireland. But there's a lot of truth in it, too, writes Medb Ruane.
So the realisation that the FAI is like a sweet-talking Romeo who lures you into a one-night stand and dumps you the next day is one of those emotional turning points from which there's no going back, no way, not ever.
Worse than a one-night stand, the FAI's unilateral decision to sell home rights to Sky for the sake of a few dollars more ranks as the kind of betrayal you'd feel if your partner of 20 years suddenly told you she'd had a lover all that time and was upping and leaving you for him. You weren't her buddy, you were her meal ticket, and now that she's found a richer one, you're the weakest link. Goodbye.
You look back on your time together and wonder was any of it for real. Did those suits from the FAI mean what they said when they praised Irish fans as the best in the world? When they said the Irish team couldn't have done it without you? Didn't they know loyalty cuts both ways?
This is the end of the "Irish fan", as we've known him/her.
Soccer's not a game any more, and now that the FAI has grown the market - on the back of so much goodwill - the product is worth more than Mick Leech could have dreamed of way back in old Glenmalure Park, Milltown, when he scored directly from the keeper's bounce so swiftly they had to change the rules.
No one blames the FAI for making money. We could do without the expensive branded jerseys, on top of the cost of decent football boots and the joyless job of keeping them clean; yet a little bit of commerce hurts no one.
The FAI has a job to do keeping grounds all over the country, helping to coach children, buying in good managers, flying their important executives to meetings all over the world.
But it's the way they do it. The deal with Sky feels underhand, below board and below the belt even when you don't work in the sweaty atmosphere of the newspaper's sports desk. Nothing illegal, mind, but nothing with values you'd want your children to learn.
It lacks honour, and that's the virtue that makes soccer sing. You can't bottle or brand it: perhaps that's why the FAI is leaving it behind.
It goes without saying that soccer is one of the genuine meritocracies left in this world. Talent, skill and hard work turn boys like Roy Keane and Damien Duff into geniuses who give millions joy.
You can't bottle joy either, but you can make people pay as they go, even while swearing you'll put the €7.5 million the FAI stands to gain from Sky into bringing on more young lads like them. Some may believe them, thousands won't.
But those young lads, as well as those who don't subscribe to Sky for a range of reasons, aren't going to be invited to the celebrity lunches with big screens showing the match against Switzerland on October 16th.
Their parents may not take them down the pub. They may not have a community hall within easy reach and, even if they do, why shouldn't they be able to watch their heroes play for free at home?
Whatever they say about supporting the youth teams, I don't see any evidence of a real commitment to young people and families in the FAI's behaviour. Its elite bureaucrats get paid to attend matches, they can claim expenses, and they don't seem to experience soccer in the domestic way so many others do.
Because even though soccer is a very public ritual with all that entails, it's also a rallying point for families who sit round the television, plan the sandwiches, buy the sweets and crisps and cheer Ireland on from the intimacy of their own sitting room.
Why should people pay for that sense of community? Surely, it is their right in the same sense as fresh air. The sense of community is so special and so fragile that when the FAI does a deal to bottle it and charge, they may as well deliver a professional foul on their own team-mates.
And when people say the FAI wouldn't have to stoop this way if people attended their local matches every weekend, then it's time to get real. Soccer is about participation, but it's a television phenomenon now, and that's why the product is able to grow.
The Taoiseach says he doesn't have Sky Sports: the Taoiseach doesn't need to. Politicians bungled this betrayal just as ham-fistedly because they, too, seem not to understand the sheer domesticity inside this public ceremony, or understand what's beyond the instant camaraderie it generates.
They know there's a way of delivering free home matches to every television in Ireland, that the deal is not "done and dusted", as John O'Donoghue said.
What a twist in the ongoing saga of Ireland Inc, the little country that just can't get enough. The FAI is greedier for money than for goals.