There might have been some still dancing around their tellies, but they’d have been weary because it’s been 75-ish days since Italy were Robbie Bradyised in Lille. So, maybe it was time for us to competitively move on and let our bygone glories rest in the bygone past. Russia 2018 is calling, after all.
But when Darragh Maloney treated us to the moment once more time it felt like only yesterday and not even the intrusion of the Olympics in between blurred the loveliness of that Wes-Robbie one-two and a nation losing its collective voice.
No time to luxuriate, though, a shiny new campaign is upon us, a sodden Serbia our first port of call.
And we embark on this journey without both our on- and off-the pitch captains, Robbie Keano and John Gilesie, Brady inheriting the former’s shirt number, Didi Hamman slipping in to the latter’s seat on the right side of the RTÉ panel, Liamo in the centre with Eamo marooned on the left.
Didi, you’d have thought, would want to start cautiously. It’s not easy filling a legend’s boots and you don’t want to antagonise the crowd by seeming too big for them, but he’d hardly started punditing when he described James McClean as a “massive tool”.
He actually meant it as a compliment, but Liamo and Eamo need to have a word about the vernacular, or next thing he’ll be calling Wes Hoolahan’s Ireland’s spanner, and we don’t want that.
Toolgate
On top of toolgate, Didi tipped Serbia to win, completely brushing aside his colleagues’ confidence, Liamo reckoning the quagmire of a pitch would suit our football, Eamo confident that “Shane’ll be up for it – Tipperary won”.
Didi might well have pointed out that Novak Djokovic had just beaten Kyle Edmund at the US Open to move in to the quarter-finals, so that might have put some Bubbles in to Serbia’s pre-match mood, but he let it go, possibly failing to spot the connection between Croke Park on Sunday afternoon and Belgrade on Monday night.
Match time and George Hamilton welcomed us to the “relic of auld decency” that is the stadium, almost as many empty seats as there were raindrops.
The cameras appeared to be filming the occasion from a vantage point in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the action seeming a touch distant, all of which brought to mind Irish games in t’other side of Europe an age or two ago.
All well
You’d have a bit of a sinky feeling, then, but Serbia were Jeff Hendrick-ised, with Branislav Ivanovic playing a deflecting role, and all was well with the world.
But then we played like massive tools, Ronnie Whelan so bewildered he thought Jeff Hendrick was Jeff Kenna while George was reduced to verse (“it wasn’t so much ricochet as John O’Shea”).
The mood in the studio? Not the best. Liamo gave the lads eight of 10 for effort, but about 12 less than that for composure, while Eamo stunned us by suggesting that “the one person we need on that pitch is Wes Hoolahan”. Bearing in mind the state of that pitch, the one person we most needed was whoever triumphed at the last Ploughing Championships, the likelihood being that Wes would disappear down one of its potholes.
Second half. “You have to say it was coming,” said a decidedly morose George when the inevitable equaliser arrived. “You have to think there’s only one team going to win the game now,” sighed Ronnie Whelan, and when Serbia got that penalty after Filip Kostic was hacked down by Jonathan Walters’s shadow, you sensed Ronnie might be right.
Hold yer horses, good God almighty, in his 23rd appearance, Daryl flippin’ Murphy! And even when the ball was in the back of the net he took a second look, just to be sure.
“This is his best night in a green shirt,” said Niall Quinn over on Sky, failing to spot that Daryl was sporting white).
How ecstatic were the panel?
“Get out of town quickly,” said Liamo, alleging theft, of the daylight kind.
Crime should never be encouraged, of course, but as robberies go, that was a massively nice one.
