It's a thin line between apathy and mass acclaim in international sport and if Ireland's football team doubted it, the bleak evidence was laid out before them in the early hours of yesterday morning. Qualification for each of the last two World Cup finals was greeted with spontaneous outbursts of national pride and thousands of well wishers converging on Dublin airport to welcome the returning heroes.

Now, save for a knot of curious workers, the airport complex was deserted as Mick McCarthy led his beaten troops back to base after a passionate battle with Belgium in the King Baudouin stadium in Brussels.

Some of the Irish team were already in tears as they left the pitch and that scene was magnified in the dressing-room as the players reflected on a prize which got away in exasperating circumstances.

The Irish supporters were quite magnificent in their enthusiasm and that made the sting of defeat all the sharper. Support on that scale deserved more than the heartache which greeted the final whistle of Austrian referee Gunter Benko.

The dream of a third successive appearance in the World Cup finals had been broken in moments of untidy defence and for all the mountainous commitment, there was simply no way back for the men in green.

Ironically, it was lost on a day when Ireland, again giving substance to their reputation as a better team away from home, produced their brightest performance since the game in Romania in April.

Now, as then, it ended only in disappointment. Yet, there could be no mistaking the merit of a performance which contrasted starkly with the ineptitude of the 1-1 draw with the Belgians at Lansdowne Road last month.

Ultimately, that result was to hang like a millstone around McCarthy and his players, as Belgium disguised the loss of several established players to extend their sequence of World Cup final appearances to five.

Frankie Van Der Elst, their captain, has shared in the last three of these, but from a situation in which he pulled most of the strings at Lansdowne Road, he looked less than brilliant here after the introduction of Ray Houghton early in the second half.

McCarthy ruled that Houghton's recent fitness problems were too serious to enable him to get the full 90 minutes and put Alan McLoughlin into his starting line-up ahead of the veteran Reading player.

If McLoughlin hoped to be touched by inspiration for a second consecutive occasion at this stage of the competition, he was destined for disappointment and, after a relatively muted display, made way for Houghton in the 49th minute.

The effect was to give more variation in the lines of the Irish attack which, from a situation in which the threat emanated almost exclusively from the flanks during the opening half, suddenly looked a lot more diverse in its threat. Houghton's arrival made for greater fluency through the middle and soon, even Van der Elst began to struggle.

Fittingly, it was Houghton's partnership with Andy Townsend, always likely to be Ireland's most realistic prospect of survival, which hauled them back into the game in the 59th minute after Belgium had led from the 24th minute through Luis Oliveira's strike.

Gary Kelly, another of the better Irish performers on the night, measured the cross to match Townsend's run and the captain looked up just look enough to see Houghton arriving into the penalty area. His cross from the byline still left the little man with a lot of work to do, but craning his neck, he somehow got sufficient power and accuracy to beat goalkeeper Filip De Wilde with a looping header from eight yards.

That Townsend should be involved in the build-up was fitting, for this unquestionably was his best Ireland performance in two years. Pushing himself through the pain barrier time and again, he ran like a stag in a display which embodied many of the features of his early international career.

Steve Staunton, another of the senior players, was less impressive and that was a disappointment. The Aston Villa player, once so powerful on the burst, only rarely got forward from left back and on those occasions when he did, his distribution was wayward.

Young Ian Harte, at centre back, has also had better games for Ireland, but against that, there was impressive testimony to character in the manner in which Mark Kennedy distanced himself from the nightmare of his first performance against Belgium to turn the screw on the defence down the left flank. This was more like the Kennedy who had impressed in earlier games against Lithuania and Iceland and it provided an unexpected bonus.

Surprisingly, then, McCarthy saw fit to withdraw him in favour of David Connolly in the 75th minute, shortly after Luc Nilis had restored Belgium's lead.

The move proved most unfortunate. Connolly, all fired up, was only on the pitch nine minutes and had already tangled with Glen De Boeck when he got his marching orders after kicking Gert Verheyen on the ground.

That was quite unforgivable in the circumstances. At the time, Belgium's composure was eroding by the minute as they contemplated the prospect of a late Irish strike removing them from the championship on the away-goals rule. Connolly's intemperate action handed them back the psychological advantage.

Tony Cascarino was, as ever, brave to a fault, but crucially, he missed a great chance in the 41st minute when mis-hitting Jeff Kenna's cross with his weaker right foot.

In nominating the most effective Irish players, Kenna deserves favourable mention. Dominant in the air, quick and decisive in the tackle, he eliminated the threat presented by Danny Boffin in what was probably his best display in international football.

Lee Carsley, too, deserves honourable mention for the manner in which he prevented the Belgians from getting to the heart of the Irish defence as often as they had in Dublin. That was crucial and so was the manner in which Kenny Cunningham recovered from the nightmare of the first Belgian goal.

The Wimbledon player, like Harte, was caught stranded when Ireland, going forward, lost the ball and Gert Claesens, one of the most influential Belgian players, dropped the ball into the yawning space between the centre backs and Shay Given. If Given had been at the edge of his penalty area, he would have had no difficulty getting to the ball first. Instead, he had to come from the six-yard line and Oliveira easily won the race and then, equally comfortably, out-paced Cunningham to put it in the empty net.

The decisive Belgian goal came after a linesman had inexplicably reversed his decision and given a throw-in to the home team, deep in the Ireland half. That error, bitterly resented by McCarthy at the time, was compounded when the Irish ill-advisedly attempted to spring the offside trap and Nilis got in on Claesen's overhead flick to beat Given from no more than a couple of yards.

If the match officials were unjustifiably harsh on the Irish in that instance, they erred on the other side approaching half-time when Harte's desperate tackle on Oliveira was adjudged to have been perpetrated outside rather than inside the penalty area.

Ireland had chances to score a second time in the last half hour when Harte's diving header was off target and Houghton's meaty drive from a Townsend chestdown struck a defender.