At half-time they played the Macarena and the stands were filled with white smoke from glowing pink flares. Our ears vibrated with the hooting of hearty Icelanders. Mick McCarthy had thunder in his face. France looked further away then ever. And it was raining.

It was ourselves we felt sorry for. This was a nightmare. Journalists travelling with any international team on a critical, two-match swing across Northern Europe would be unanimous in the view that, if that team is to lose a match, then it is better by far that they lose the second match.

The consequences of losing the first match are grim: the tracksuits will go into a collective sulk. Media bans will be threatened and we might be forced to subsist on a drip feed of surly quotes. No more sidling up to those players whom we consider to be our good pals. No cheery press conferences with the manager.

Worse. Harsh things would have to be said in the papers on Sunday and Monday morning. These pages should be used as shrouds for battered cod and smoked plaice, but because there isn't yet a law against it, fans and blazers arriving in Lithuania this afternoon would be bringing those papers with them and tossing them into the team hotel like incendiary devices.

Players always claim they don't read the newspapers and don't care what anybody says about them. Then they quote some perceived slight committed to print seven years ago which, despite their £20,000-a week job, they have chosen not to get over. Bastards.

Most journalists would rather go through a messy divorce than cease to be on bantering terms with the Irish soccer team. How our spirits soar when we address Mr Staunton as "Stan" and get away with it. We yearn for Mr McLoughlin to touch our cuff and tell us gently, "You can call me Al." We agonise as to whether Mr Cascarino's attention is best summoned by a cheery "Hey Cas" or the more presumptuous "Hey Cazzie". Generally only those with 20 or more international caps get to call him Cazzie.

Thus, the half-time break on Saturday was spent forlornly listening to the Macarena. We drummed our fingers and looked at each other disconsolately like a family waiting for the specialist to bring bad news from the latest tests. After the break, the bad news came. The Irish defence made their own contribution to this celebration of physical comedy. Amidst the futile protesting, Andy Townsend got booked. In the press box grown men wept. Woe was us. The prospect of sharing a four-hour flight to Vilnius with a team just beaten by Iceland was too much to bear.

It was never supposed to be like this. We had been nodding sagely and smiling broadly after David Connolly had accepted Eyjolfur Sverrisson's gift of an early goal on Saturday. All the good luck which we journalists have been due on this World Cup campaign was coming our way at last.

Nobody realises what an ordeal this has been for us. We have been cruelly deprived of the glamour trips which a draw involving Italy, France, Spain, Denmark, Portugal or Germany might have provided. Apart from being played in major international cities, places which bestow a glamour befitting our profession, these games would have provided us with a chance to give our stiff cliches a run. Have the Italians eschewed the stifling defensiveness which was once their hallmark, and what about the efficiency of those Germans? Could it not be counter-pointed with the French, nay Gallic, flair we are likely to encounter in the city they call the Paris of the . . . emm, France?

Instead, we have traipsed from Liechtenstein to Vilnius and all points between without so much as the hint of a Stadium of Light or a Nou Camp. We have flirted with roll mop herrings in rainy Reykjavik and huffed up mountainsides in Liechtenstein. We have been mugged in Bucharest and beaten in Macedonia.

We have paid dearly for fillet of puffin breast in Iceland and consumed very spicey kebabs in Lithuania. We have moaned about the price of drink everywhere and argued about how many local washers we are entitled to in exchange for our mighty punt. We have patronised many people by merely stocking up with US dollars before trips and expecting them to accept them. We have laughed at the cheery tour guide who speaks to the press bus as we pull away from any given airport.

It's been hell, but there have been moments of relief. We won on Saturday. Us. And the team. And although the Icelanders hadn't bothered wearing black armbands, they nevertheless made fitting commemoration of the week's famous deceased with an abundance of charitable works which yielded Ireland four goals.

We spent the air-time from Reykjavik to Vilnius as busy as chipmunks working out all the permutations of World Cup Group Eight before announcing dramatically that we were flying into a "winner takes all scenario".

Boy, were we a merry bunch by the time we arrived in Vilnius early yesterday morning. A player stole a journalist's passport for a jape and returned it just before the hack was led away to the salt mines.

Another player tossed a jelly baby which hit a tabloid journalist in the face. The tabloid journalist was inclined to the view that the projectile was too heavy to have been a jelly baby and may perhaps have been a jelly bean or even a wine gum. ("You could take an eye out with a wine gum.")

Whatever the confection was, it was thrown and it made contact and the sinister ramifications were discussed in greater detail than anything since the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, it was noted that the player at the centre of the jelly baby investigation (by yesterday afternoon it was being described as a "conspiracy") may have been a Lee Harvey Oswald-type patsey. Nobody could remember him hitting a target before.

We sat on the media bus outside the airport for about 17 hours. The guide on the media bus had a sing song voice, and she told us brightly that the sky was crying. Amidst the laughter several of us noted the phrase down for use later in the week.

Moments later the laughter died and our lives were changed forever. Without warning the coach carrying the team bore them off to a different hotel to that in which the press were to be billeted. On the media bus there were tears and wounded hearts. Briefly we considered booking into the team's hotel and leaving our pre-booked media hotel empty. We were too confused to be decisive, however, and the tail-lights of the team coach had disappeared from view before we could marshal a fleet of taxis to follow them. We sat on the media bus and fretted. For all we knew the Irish team may have been kidnapped. Without holding a press conference to announce it.

That hurt. We felt we deserved better after all we had been through together. Some of us took jelly babies in the face for those guys.