For Darragh Maloney, hope springs eternal. “This could be one of those days that echoes in football eternity,” he said as he introduced us to RTÉ’s coverage of our lads’ trip to Wembley. And he didn’t even have his fingers crossed behind his back.
His hopefulness was somewhat in contrast to the mood of those of us who were collecting every cushion in the house to build a wall in front of the telly, the nerve levels roughly about 8.9 on the Richter scale.
Admittedly, Darragh’s buoyancy levels dipped a little when Tony O’Donoghue brought us the team news: “4-1-4-1, we didn’t see that one coming,” he said, the apparent locating of Nathan Collins in midfield leaving him and his panel a bit flustered.
The worry, of course, was that Collins would find himself in front of a flat back nine for the bulk of the evening, that there’d be an Alamo-ish feel to it all. “I don’t think it’s a great time to experiment like this,” said a fretting Shay Given, although Didi Hamann suggested that if we gave England the space in midfield that we granted Finland, we’d be pulverised. So maybe sticking Collins in there was no bad thing.
Richie Sadlier attempted to be upbeat too, reckoning that this was “a good time to play England” because they were missing so many of their stars, but he put the kibosh on that cheerfulness by adding that “with the exception of Caoimhín Kelleher, I don’t think any of the Irish players would get in that England team”, even if it had an injury list the length of the Magna Carta.
So Darragh wondered if we should “kick them up and down the park”, Didi reckoning our best hope was to “bring them down to our level”. In short, they suspected Heimir Hallgrímsson would not have instructed his lads to play total football.
Over on ITV, Mark Pougatch was attempting to inject some hope into Roy Keane’s heart. “Two wins in their last three games, green shoots of recovery?” “Hmm,” said Roy, so that was, well, a hmm.
Anthems. Lee Carsley opted not to sing-a-long to Amhrán na bhFiann, which will remain a stain on his character forever. But we came away with a draw, which you’d take, the booing-decibels for each tune on a par. You’d almost think there was some history between these two nations.
First half? 0-0. Ireland were ruddy marvellous, in an Alamo-ish kind of way,
“Whatcha make of that Didi,” Darragh asked at the break. “I don’t think you can play a much better half than Ireland did. It’s been absolutely excellent.”
And, of course, we should have had 1½ penalties, Evan Ferguson and Sammie Szmodics – ish – slain by the Sassenach in the box, VAR having a nap when both violations occurred.
On the crime against our Evan – Shay: “Stonewall.” Richie: “Nailed on.” Didi: “Where was VAR?!”
“Are we looking through green-tinted glasses here,” asked Darragh. Richie: “No! Just look at the footage?” Didi: “I’m looking through German glasses. It was a penalty.”
Second half? Sometimes there aren’t enough cushions in the house. When they talk about a game of two halves, they were thinking about Wembley on November 17th in the year of our Lord 2024.
The gist: It all turned into the shape of a pear. It was 0-0 after 53 minutes and nine seconds, and 3-0 after 57 minutes and 45. “It’s all unravelling,” said Des Curran, Ray Houghton sighing so heavily beside him you feared his mic would drown from the tears. And, just to cap it all, Ireland were also down to 10 men after Liam Scales was giving first dibs on the dressingroom bath.
Could it get worse? God yeah. Jarrod Bowen had hardly entered the fray when he inserted the ball into our net, and then Taylor Harwood-Bellis made it 5-0 on his debut.
“It’s bittersweet for me, this,” said Roy after. “Not everyone knows, Harwood-Bellis is your future son-in-law,” said Pougatch. “It’s not done and dusted yet,” said Roy, “things can change very quickly in the Keane household.” If he’s a true patriot, he’ll refuse to give his daughter away to that lad.
Back on RTÉ. “That was a tough watch,” Darragh sighed, this day due to echo in football eternity for being entirely muck. “You’ve got to see the positive side,” insisted Didi, referring to that valiant first half, but the problem with this encounter was that there was a second.
“Fingers crossed, some good days ahead,” said Roy, who also detected green shoots, before he headed home to have a word with his daughter. A wedding with a no-show from the da is the saddest of things.
