Had the gods been less benevolent to the brave, it might have ended up in a six-goal mauling, a day to set alongside the disasters which have overtaken Ireland football teams abroad, at infrequent intervals, over the years.

Instead, Steve Staunton and his players rode their luck so well that they felt positively aggrieved as they trooped dejectedly from the pitch in Zagreb's Maksimir Stadium with the 30,000 crowd still celebrating Croatia's injury time winner.

With the game in its 94th minute, Kenny Cunningham flawed his finest performance in an Ireland shirt with the error which let in Davor Suker, one of football's great predators, for the winner. And the Croatians, on the fringe of elimination from the Euro 2000 championship after reaching the World Cup finals in France a little more than 12 months ago, were suddenly competitive again.

Conversely, Ireland must win their remaining games in Malta and Macedonia to gain automatic entry to the finals next summer as winners of Group Eight. And even that may earn them only inclusion in the play-off for second placed teams if Yugoslavia also win their remaining games.

Those were the kind of mathematics which filled the minds of the Irish fans as they made their way out of the stadium on a warm, comfortable night to reflect on how it had all gone cruelly wrong for them in those tense, fateful minutes of injury time.

Some 24 hours or so earlier, those figures had also occupied the attention of manager Mick McCarthy as he pondered the permutation of results which would deliver his team to the top of the table after the final set of games is played on October 10th.

In the end, it seems, he gave Wednesday's meeting with Malta in Valletta greater priority, deeming that the probability of three points there overrode any of the considerations which entered into the equation for the Zagreb game.

Tired limbs, he reasoned, would be better rested for the job in Malta, and, as a consequence, he made four changes from the team which beat Yugoslavia, in addition to the enforced absence of Roy Keane and Denis Irwin.

The effect was to dilute his resources to the point where Ireland never had a realistic chance of winning Saturday's game. Instead, he pitched his ambition at saving the point which, in the ultimate, could have been almost as important as a win.

There are those who will argue that by sending out a weakened team he was guilty of a miscalculation which may yet hang like a millstone around his chances of taking Ireland to the European finals for the first time in 12 years.

The counter argument is that he came within 90 seconds of pulling off a remarkable coup with a team which included only Mark Kinsella of the four midfielders who started against Yugoslavia, and neither of the front men on that occasion, Robbie Keane and Niall Quinn.

Kinsella, it has to be said, was quite magnificent. Edged, perhaps, by the Keanes, Roy and Robbie, for the individual honours against Yugoslavia, and touched off here by Cunningham, he still rates as McCarthy's most valuable player over the first two games of the triple programme, a marvellous competitor who grafted at a rate wholly disproportionate to his physique.

With a fit Roy Keane playing alongside him, he might have provided the axis for our first win in the Balkans, inhospitable territory for Irish teams in the past and now as unforgiving as ever when the final, expensive error was perpetrated.

When you invite the opposition to play the game in your half of the pitch, as the Irish so often did on Saturday, the wages of error are high. And yet, despite the occasional clanger, McCarthy's team somehow managed to survive to foster hope of one of the great escapes of the sporting year.

In the first half alone, the Croatians might well have scored four, denied on two occasions by superb saves from Alan Kelly and then by two precisely timed tackles which saw Cunningham whip the ball from the toes of Suker and Robert Jarni in turn.

And when Suker, for once losing his marker, peeled off to head a cross from Kovac into the corner of the net, a linesman's upraised flag for offside aborted the Arsenal player's triumphant charge to accept the adulation of his fans, seated high in the stand behind the Irish goal.

By contrast, the Irish never mounted an attack of any substance after a deceptive early flourish had run out of impetus. And yet, courtesy of a basic error by Igor Stimac, they almost took the lead in a hectic spell approaching half time when, with goalkeeper Drazen Ladic off his line, Gary Kelly couldn't direct the lob into an empty net.

It's indicative of the pattern of a one-sided game in which the home team forced no fewer than 24 corners that within a couple of minutes of the restart the long countdown to the finish had already begun for the 1,500 Irish fans inside the stadium.

At times, the Irish penalty area bore all the characteristics of a minefield as danger erupted with every passing minute. Mario Stanic twice managed to miscue the header, on the second occasion directing it against the crossbar. Staunton, Cunningham and Gary Kelly all managed to make vital blocks, and behind them, Alan Kelly, in his first game of the season at any level, was quite magnificent.

For all their possession, the Croatians had few inventive ideas. At times, Aljosa Asanovic fitted the description of a playmaker, and Robert Jarni, rampaging down the left flank, was always impressive. But shorn of the injured Zvonimir Boban, they had nobody, it seemed, capable of sorting out the final, decisive pass, nobody with the craft to change the direction of an increasing game of chance.

Sukor, skippering the team, was always the one most likely to turn it around for them, but when he shot wide from point blank range in the 78th minute, Croatian heads, as Slaven Bilic would later acknowledge, began to drop. That was untypical of the man who took the Golden Boot award in the World Cup finals in France last year. But then, with all the escape routes apparently closed off to them, he again strode forward to demand the gratitude of his compatriots.

It's a measure of their growing desperation that it originated from a long, hopeful ball played by Robert Kovav in his own half of the pitch. Fatefully, Cunningham for once misjudged the flight of the ball and, as he back-pedalled furiously, Suker got in behind him for the goal which lit up the stadium.

In that moment, the rewards of mountainous commitment were snatched from men who deserved better. Kinsella, as mentioned, was quite superb in holding the middle line together, and alongside him Alan McLoughlin seized the chance of his recall to prove that he is more than just a support player who has spent much the greater part of his international career on the bench.

Cunningham, invariably capable of finding those vital extra inches in the stretch, was again inspirational, and in goal Kelly, cast in a role which was so often the lot of his father, Alan senior, responded in a manner which the elder member of the clan would surely have approved.

Given the job specifications, Damien Duff's inclusion ahead of Ian Harte was one of the bigger surprises in the team selection. But no less than the remainder, the Blackburn player spared nothing in the task of fashioning a result which would have stood football logic on its head.

In the end it failed, but it had been a fascinating exercise in survival against the odds until Suker delivered the punch to gratify headline writers and dismay the rest of us.

Croatia: Ladic, D Simic, Jarni, Soldo, Stimac, Bilic (Rukavina 46), Asanovic, Stanic (J Simic 85), Suker, Rapaic, R Kovac. Subs Not Used: Mrmic, Juric, Tudor, Jurcic, N Kovac. Goals: Suker 90.

Republic Of Ireland: A Kelly, Carr, Cunningham, Breen, Staunton, Carsley, McLoughlin, Kinsella, G Kelly (Harte 72), Duff (Kilbane 56), Cascarino (Quinn 82). Subs Not Used: Kenna, Holland, Robbie Keane, Kiely. Booked: Carsley, Staunton, McLoughlin, Kilbane.

Referee: M Diaz-Vega (Spain).