LockerRoom: France is such an adult place. A real grown-up country where actual grown ups make genuine grown-up choices. Escaping from the clutches of the Mother of all Nanny States to go Paris for a weekend is like being a sailor on shore leave. It takes a while to get your land legs.
Apart from the green jerseys, the green hair and the leprechaun hats you could tell the Irish in Paris anyway. There's a conversation sports journalists have whenever we go to a stadium abroad. It goes like this. Enter stadium. Shake head. Turn and say in near unison, "Jaysus, now why can't we have something like this at home?".
In Paris the Irish were the ones who turned into every avenue, boulevard and square shaking their heads and wondering aloud, "Jaysus ." And we were the ones peering at L'Equipe, the wonderful (I'd say) French sports daily, peering as if it it were the Dead Sea Scrolls. And from lunchtime on Saturday onwards we were the ones shaking our mobile phones, tapping them off lamp-posts and asking "Is yours gone too? Mine's gone."
We brought a certain childlike simplicity to Paris. It was half-time in the game on Saturday night when we glanced at the big clock and realised it was 10 in the evening and the thought struck us that if the second half didn't go as planned we could hit town at midnight and drink and smoke till it was time for the plane. Alternatively, if the second half did go as planned we could hit town at midnight and drink and smoke till it was time for the plane. And if the worst came to the worst where better to be sick and dying or just hung-over than in the tender arms of one of the world's last great socialised health systems.
But of course we were grown ups in a sunny sort of unofficial way and we had work to do and we don't go puffing and pinting anymore so we burrowed our way down through the Stade de France and entered into the happy carnival spirit that is the mixed zone on a good night.
The team had come to an adult place and played like grown ups. So many of the great nights on foreign fields have ended with us clinging on by the fingernails, booting every ball back down the field, watching the clock, counting the seconds.
This was different. We played the last 10 minutes mainly in the French half. We were their match in terms of sophistication, class and cool.
Harvesting quotes as midnight approached felt a little odd but you could get to enjoy the habit. The team playing well is an occurrence which, according to tests, reduces the team's grumpiness-quotient by as much as 43 per cent. The boys had played well and everybody thought so. Thus there were no fears about how they might react on the plane in the morning when the Aer Lingus people kindly handed them the first editions of the Sunday papers.
And better than that, it was a Saturday night and this paper in particular doesn't appear till Monday. The mobiles were gone. Nothing better for the weekday tradesmen than seeing the Sunday edition artisans sweat.
In the ground the Irish had colonised the south end of the lovely stade. It wasn't quite the total annexation which took place in Giants Stadium 10 years ago but it was a fair wallpapering of Tricolours and the merry singalong approach to La Marseillaise certainly grabbed the attention of the French hosts.
The French are going through a period of brooding introspection. They are bemused at the sudden decline of their team. Whereas we had the Celtic Tiger during which time the usual suspects made out like bandits, the French had the 1998 World Cup and the 2000 European Championships, events which brought joy to every heart. Suddenly it's recession time in France.
They aren't patient. On Saturday France Football magazine polled 20 former internationals from Just Fontaine to Frank Leboeuf for their opinions on Raymond Domenech's performance. The man is three games into his tenure and hasn't lost a game yet. He is currently beset not just by the retirements of some of the gods but by the physical fallibility of most of the gods. The 20 former players generally said it would take time and that the task is huge. When Domenech comes to the mixed zone, he looks like a man who knows precisely that.
He is a good-looking, slightly aquiline man with distinguished grey locks (all grey locks are distinguished since mine went that colour) and he seems overly eager to please the media. He stands alone in front of some of his detractors, holding his microphone in the fashion of a stand-up comic and explains the way he had seen things.
You expect French journalists to be on their feet making passionate speeches of denunciation, proclaiming the essential tenets of French football. They are too cool for that. They punish Domenech with their cold indifference to his presence. After a little while Irish journalists are asking him questions in halting French and the rest of us are nodding knowingly. We catch every third word as he expands on his point.
Strange business. Outside you can still hear renderings of Come On You Boys and Green, and especially dusted down for the occasion, Que Sera, Sera. Earlier on the fringes of the Stade, Irish fans had literally been reduced to giving tickets away, just walking up to touts and making unwanted presents of fistfuls of tickets. The French partisans occupied a little over half the stadium and if the Irish had chosen not to travel like a Roman legion the stadium would have been at least one-third empty.
You feel for Domenech but it is wonderful watching Brain Kerr go about his work. Like watching chess. He's said again and again he hates this old consoling cliché about the "passionate Irish" (indeed he's quite passionate about hating it), and he's right. Being patted on the head about our passion has been the condescension granted to us as losers for so long.
When Kerr sees a game he views its possibilities in broader terms than early ball and lads running 'til their legs turn to stumps. You could argue after Saturday night that either team deserved to win but you couldn't venture that either side was outclassed. We played thoughtful and inventive football and met the French on their own terms. It was if we had responded to their questions in fluent, idiomatic French.
On Saturday night, in any language, you could see the value of a tuned-in Roy Keane. France Football magazine ran a headline on Saturday which needed a quick second glance. Roy Keane, it said, is l'eternal guerrier.
C'est vrai! There seems to be an unlikely hint of, if not the everlasting, well the Duracell Bunny about Keane these days. He went to Saipan intent on packing in international football after the European championships which took place this summer. As it transpired in Saipan he packed in the international scene a whole lot earlier. Now he has to be thinking of crowning his career as the venerable lynchpin of an Irish team at the 2006 World Cup. Goes to show you never can tell.
You really can't. After all who would have thought that Kevin Kilbane would effectively reinvent himself as a perpetual motion central midfielder doing the drawing of water and the hewing of wood; Roy stays back and guards the cave, Kilbane ventures forth and hunts? Not just that though, Roy waves the play on like a traffic cop in Times Square. Again and again on Saturday he could be glimpsed urging the Irish forward. Urging isn't the right word. Commanding them. Ordering them. Making them.
Not only did we have the edge on young Rio-Antonio Mavuba and the rather petulant Olivier Dacourt in the centre of midfield we looked comfortable elsewhere. Kenny Cunningham made back passes as if he was being paid piece-rate for each half dozen of them, yet nothing got past him or Andy O'Brien, which is unusual given that Thierry Henry was part of the raiding party. Shay Given was sublime. We had more width and more ideas than the French. We had a little panache.
So it was a happy scene as the Irish came through the mixed zone. Everyone except the stubbled, shaven-headed twins, Carrand Keane (you know which one) stopped for a chat. The gabbing ran late. Boys who became men in the adult kingdom of the world.
