SIDELINE CUT:He has confounded and puzzled his host country during his time in charge but now the wily Italian has a glorious chance to leave a permanent imprint on Irish sport, writes KEITH DUGGAN

THERE WAS a clear sign Giovanni Trapattoni’s time in Ireland was beginning to rub off on him when he sat down after Wednesday night’s vital, topsy-turvy win over Armenia and alluded to the fact that “the rugby” had lost on Saturday. The acknowledgement – delivered in the strange and wonderful Esperanto through which Trapattoni can leave even the most dogged post-match inquisitors literally speechless – suggested the Italian is beginning to understand the intricacy of the Irish relationship between the national teams and the national mood.

And as Zbigniew Boniek produced the Republic of Ireland’s name from the play-off lottery as the team that will face Estonia in the play-offs next month, the thought occurred that old Trap ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

It has been a queer few days in Irish sport.

The football team was on the last leg of a nightmarish journey home from Andorra when most of the alarm clocks in Ireland went off in time for the rugby team’s World Cup quarter-final last Saturday morning.

There have been many disappointments for Irish sporting teams before and there will be again, but the ridiculous hour made this one particularly memorable. It was all over before the day had even begun and so for both the serious rugby followers and dilettantes swept along by the occasion, all of Saturday was a bit of an anti-climax. Wales were young, but they played with something of the entitlement of tradition.

Their dash and fearlessness and the obvious belief that they belonged on that stage harked back to the free-running days of Welsh rugby.

When Ireland reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup, things seem to tighten up slightly. On Saturday morning, Wales seemed so loose and carefree from the beginning. The pressure the Irish players placed on themselves to deliver must have been immense. And the knowledge that this was a last World Cup for so many of the golden generation of Irish rugby players increased the sense that it was now-or-never.

It was probably only this morning, when the Irish players got up early to watch the first of the World Cup semi-finals that the awful feeling of a precious chance slipping out of their hands revisited them. They could have been there. The consolation of playing Wales in the opening match of the Six Nations next year is illusory. In fact, beating the Welsh in that match would provoke an inevitable review of that World Cup match and deepen the gloomy realisation that a once-in-a-generation chance had disappeared.

Playing a highly-capricious French team for a place in the final of the World Cup is not a position that Ireland are likely to be in again for many, many years – if at all.

In their respective careers with Munster, Leinster and Ulster, the Irish rugby players have spent their professional lives coping with a passionate and demanding local support. That feeling becomes even more intense at international level and, more often than not, they have exceeded all reasonable expectation. But in this match, they fell badly short of the standards they have set for themselves over the last decade.

There is something brutally swift about the departure patterns from the Rugby World Cup: it is as merciless as an X-Factor rejection. The team had a night for one last knees-up and then faced a punishing flight home. The welcome they received from fans is a measure of the warmth and respect in which the Irish players are held here. But by the time the rugby squad had dispersed, all attention had shifted to the national football team in Lansdowne Road.

In spending Sunday and Monday in Dublin, Giovanni Trapattoni must have absorbed some of the emotional disappointment caused by the team’s defeat. The aftermath of Ireland’s outrageous exit from the World Cup play-off in Paris two years ago gave Trapattoni his first true taste of the status of the national football team in this country.

And maybe his two days spent here before the Armenia game enhanced his understanding of the way that this small little island turns giddy with anticipation before big sporting events and rows in with blind enthusiasm and is therefore left open to monumental, crushing disappointments.

So he understood that all the hope and optimism dashed by the flatness of “the rugby” against Wales on Saturday morning was rapidly transferred onto his assortment of England-based Irishmen. He understood that Ireland making it to the European Championships was the last chance for something to shout about.

Trapattoni has remained an enigmatic, godfatherly figure over his years as Irish boss. He materialises in the build-up to internationals, looking suave in suits and enviably trim in his training gear, explaining tactical decisions in amicable and often impenetrable torrents of English/Italian.

There is something to admire in his blasé indifference to the criticism he has received in print and, more vocally, on the television. The more Eamon Dunphy fumes, the more Trapattoni makes it clear he could not care less. In comparison to the scrutiny that football managers are under in Italy, his experience here is a breeze.

That detachment has been important. When Brian Kerr managed Ireland, he knew personally many of those whose jobs it became to critique his performance on the sideline. Steve Staunton too was acutely aware that the critics – particularly the heavyweight panel in RTÉ television – were condemning him with each passing game. Trapattoni has flown above all that and tends to treat the football press corps the way an exasperated but kindly teacher treats a class of unruly teenage boys.

Because of that distance, the Irish do not yet feel as if they know the Italian.

The difference between his relationship to Ireland and that of Jack Charlton could not be more pronounced.

Most of Ireland’s children circa 1988-1995 probably have Big Jack’s autograph on some bit of paper or match programme.

Charlton liked to socialise in Ireland, he told a great yarn and he was in high demand on the after-dinner circuit. Irish people warmed to Big Jack and his heated exchanges with Dunphy during those emotional few weeks in 1990 helped to raise the temperature in what turned out to be a monumental World Cup for Ireland.

That Trapattoni may have the luck that all generals need seemed inarguable on Thursday morning. The miraculous draw in Russia, the bounce of the ball against Armenia and now a two-match affair against Estonia for a place in the European finals for the first time since 1988; it has been a good run.

But it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Charlton era was born through the staggering and unexpected good fortune of Gary Mackay scoring for Scotland against Bulgaria, a goal which sent Ireland through to those championships. Charlton, too, had an angel on his shoulder.

So after failing in heartbreaking circumstances in a daunting World Cup play-off against France, Trapattoni now has a more straightforward chance to leave a permanent imprint on Irish sport. He may find himself surprised by the reaction if the next 180 minutes go according to plan. He has confounded and puzzled his host country during his time in charge but now Trapattoni is on the threshold of a wonderful chapter in the twilight of a magnificent football life.