Oct 10,2024
The Republic of Ireland's first loss of many in this decade occurred against Finland four years and one month ago.
That game offered the first heart-sinking sign that the Stephen Kenny era was not going to deliver on its revolutionary promise.
The Finns had never beaten Ireland before in international football, though they looked worryingly superior in this game, with the muscular Teemu Pukki far more potent than anything the hosts had to offer. Substitute Fredric Jensen slid in at the back post to score the only goal and it took a couple of fine saves from Darren Randolph to keep the score down.
Four years on and the Irish football family have gotten used to losing.
During the Covid interruption in advance of that Finland game, we on this website had looked back at the national team's previous worst era, the 57 months without a win between November 1967 and June 1972. Perhaps we can claim this was fulfilling our public service remit by preparing the general public for the coming era, which would be almost as bad/arguably worse.
That long winless run in the late 60s and early 70s consisted of just 21 games, one of which was abandoned due to fog in Dalymount and none of which were against Gibraltar. The smallest nation - in population terms - that Ireland played against in this benighted era was Scotland, and that match was a 1-1 draw. In that context, there is a strong claim that the first half of the 2020s has indeed been the worst era in the history of the Irish national team.
The sense of resignation that enveloped Irish football in the aftermath of the September window was overwhelming, with a broad swathe of the fanbase accepting there was little to be done in the short term.
Sure, there was isolated bellyaching about why such-and-such wasn't playing - Troy Parrott! Liam Scales! - but most supporters were inclined to roll their eyes. During the Trap/O'Neill era, of course, we had that long succession of overlooked cause celebres, whose reputation invariably grew the longer they were exiled. But the patience for that type of thinking has worn thin.
There was much chatter on the strange division of labour within the Ireland management team - with new man Heimir Hallgrimsson devolving many of the usual managerial functions to John O'Shea and Paddy McCarthy - but the meatier discussions focused on the 'macro' questions of how Irish football had gotten to this point.
For the England game, FAI president Paul Cooke had taken the unusual step of urging supporters to put pressure on the many politicians in attendance to support Irish football with government money, indicating where the real battleground now lies.
Looking at the Sportsfile bank of pictures of the giddy politicians at the game - Simon Harris (who watched alongside Keir Starmer), Catherine Martin and Thomas Byrne among them - it was easy to imagine that they probably envisaged this would be akin to those Ireland-England games of old, possibly with the hosts snatching a 1-1 draw with a second-half equaliser and everyone departing with honour intact (Harris spoke of his memories of USA '94 pre-match). To the extent that Official Ireland got a bracing, up-close glimpse of the way things are now, that England game may have even done some good in the long-term.
The fallout from the England game was particularly ugly. On ESPN, ex-Scotland international Craig Burley upbraided the English press for praising their boys too much after the game on the grounds that Ireland were "GARBAGE!", a word he enunciated with some venom.
Getting back to the immediate future, Hallgrimsson, taking more of an active role, spoke of the need to engender more confidence in the team and to find a settled side, where everyone has more surety as to what their team-mates are doing.
Ireland played reasonably OK for the first 50 minutes of the Greece game, their better co-ordinated pressing game occasionally making life uncomfortable for their opponents.
But then Fotis Ioannidis was afforded a criminal amount of space on the edge of the box and curled home the opener and the familiar air of muttering disenchantment descended on the Aviva. The most striking thing for those in attendance was the Irish players' body language after the goal - the hands thrown in the air, the furtive, disgusted glances around for a scapegoat, the slumped heads as they braced themselves for the howls of disapproval from the stands.
There was a veritable stampede for the exits after the second goal, with fans scuttling down the stairs before the game kicked off again. How many of them will be back for the home game against Finland is a big question now.
While their contentious bundle ticketing policy is a big factor, 37,000 was an extremely robust crowd for a Nations League game in League B, especially for a team who have lost games as relentlessly as Ireland have in the past couple of years. Gus Poyet was famously baffled by the forbearance and loyalty of the Irish support, in comparison with the fickle lot back in Greece, who couldn't be bothered to turn up to watch their team beat the likes of us.
Hallgrimsson has wielded a bit of an axe in this squad, with Matt Doherty and Alan Browne, starters against England and Greece respectively, being excluded altogether.
Doherty's languid, almost Berbatovian bearing is probably not something Irish football can accommodate at the minute, and especially not in a full-back.
The Wolves man was widely vilified for his extreme casualness in the lead-up to Greece's second goal, with even the normally mild-mannered Stephen Kelly issuing a particularly scathing call-out in his post-match analysis.
Five years ago, after a stellar performance and a late goal in a Euro 2020 qualifier against Denmark, Mick McCarthy was raked over the coals for not having picked Doherty all along. Now the crowd were baying for his removal.
Doherty, unfortunately, must have one of the worst win-loss ratios of any Ireland player with his number of caps. Amusingly, one of the few games he missed during the Kenny era was the 3-0 win over Scotland. (In mitigation, Doherty's superb display against Portugal in Faro ended when he was withdrawn injured with Ireland leading 1-0).
Browne, meanwhile, seems to have paid the price for losing the ball in the lead-up to the second goal and possibly wasn't helped by his horrible skied shot in the first half after some enterprising play from Sammie Szmodics and Chiedozie Ogbene down the right flank.
The Ireland manager struck a diplomatic note during the squad announcement, insisting that he needed to look at alternative options, implying that yet another Nations League campaign had been given over to experimentation.
Former interim manager, and now unusually prominent assistant manager, John O'Shea insisted this week we were "too derogatory" about the current crop of the players and urged more positivity in the short term.
Focusing on the positive side, Troy Parrott has got into a scoring habit in the Dutch league and looks to be infused with confidence all of a sudden. Evan Ferguson has finally recovered from the injury which has set him back over the past year. There is no shortage of centre-backs to choose from, even if there is a gross shortage in midfield.
The Finns, notwithstanding their pair of 1-0 wins over Ireland in 2020, are hardly intimidating opposition themselves. They reached their first ever major tournament at Euro 2020 but fell short in Euro 2024 qualifying, in which they were turned over at home by Kazakhstan.
Their results last month weren't much to write home about, a 3-0 loss in Greece and then a more respectable 2-0 defeat in Wembley.
"Nobody is really expecting anything against England, which is such a strong team at the moment," Virtainen said.
"But Ireland, recently, has been quite a good opponent for Finland."
A good opponent for Finland and too many others.
