There's only one Seamus Coleman but how we wish we had 11 of him

AS LAST night's game limped apologetically into first half injury time, Seamus Coleman took off across the pitch.

- MARK MCCADDEN

With every few steps, he looked to his right, ready to feed a killer pass through Armenian lines.

But his urgency wasn't matched by those ahead of him. No movement, no eye-of-a-needle gaps through which to thread a decisive ball.

And so this little episode ended with Coleman on his backside, conceding a goal kick by the left-hand corner flag. A sorry sight.

Coleman is a good man, a warrior, Donegal's finest, who at the age of 37 has stubbornly taken his career into injury time.

He has sampled the good times. He knows what it's like when Ireland compete with the best.

He captained the country when they beat Italy at Euro 2016 to progress from the group stages. He wore the armband again when France needed two second half goals to see off Martin O'Neill's side.

It can't be easy for the Killybegs star to see Irish football in the state it's in now, heading into November's games with an injury time equaliser for Hungary in Portugal inflicting another damaging blow on Ireland's World Cup hopes.

It can't be easy when the armband is no longer his, when the glory days are a distant memory.