A demigod disappeared, outplayed & out-staged by a Belvedere FC old boy

Of course, it is premature to talk about Irish football's new Age of Enlightenment, but something stirred along the leafy avenues around Lansdowne Road on Thursday, an awakening that felt distinctly like the rumbling of a long-dormant volcano.

- BY ROY CURTIS

For the first time in many years, an international fixture at the Aviva Stadium delivered the pyrotechnic sensation of Vesuvius erupting, the molten atmosphere consuming even the stricken Portuguese demigod Cristiano Ronaldo.

Troy Parrott, a child of the capital's inner-city with the strut of a Hollywood A-lister, sent the lava of hope flaming into Dublin's night sky, warming hearts while transporting older supporters back to distant times of infinite brightness.

For younger supporters, it was a milestone moment, unbounding them at last from their underclass history, confirmation that all the ancient stories about the heady emotions such nights can stir are more substantial and authentic than mere romantic myths.

As the thunderstruck crowd fired one deafening wave of upstart adulation after another across the fevered arena, the night evoked the best of times, when Jack Charlton brought a flat cap and pitman pragmatism to Irish life.

A magical bygone era when the nation got giddily drunk on the exploits of its football team, when 11 athletes carried the power to lift millions out of slumps and slouches, injecting the Class A narcotic of euphoria into so many veins.

When an unlikely victory over England or Italy or Germany felt like every county on the island simultaneously winning the All-Ireland.

When summer carnivals brought tens of thousands to Stuttgart and Rome and New York and brought the nation to a delirious standstill, the highly addictive opiates of identity and belonging enslaving the population.

When the country unashamedly and with highoctane energy went stark, raving bonkers.

MASTERCLASS

When Colm Meaney, playing the lead role in the film adaptation of Roddy Doyle's The Van, was every father in the land, Italia '90 facilitating the Irish male in exploring previously untouched emotional terrain.