Out Of Place...

- Jonathan O'Brien

Being an Ireland fan means swallowing one painful qualification failure after another as the years roll by. In 1981, criminally bad refereeing in Brussels and Paris stole our place at España 82. A decade later, Ray Houghton’s failure to shoot into an open goal at Wembley meant we missed Euro 92. In 1995, Jack Charlton ended up with seven defenders on the pitch when we needed a goal against Holland at Anfield. Let’s not even mention the throw-in that never was against Belgium in 1997, the failure to clear one last corner in Skopje in 1999, or Thierry Henry.

But the 5-1 surrender at home to Denmark on November 14 belongs in a category of its own. This time, there was no hard luck story, no referee to blame. Instead, Ireland’s own technical inferiority and Martin O’Neill’s bizarre decisions resulted in an embarrassing capitulation to opponents who are unlikely to do anything special in Russia next year.

Most of us already knew that this Ireland team had regressed since Euro 2016. But it hurt badly to see Denmark slapping them around the face with the reality of it. The sight of poor Cyrus Christie being viciously abused on Twitter later that night for having Jamaican roots, and therefore somehow being un-Irish, put the tin hat on one of the most miserable and depressing defeats in our history.