When RTÉ released their viewing figures for the weekend's two main sporting events, Ireland's important qualifier against Georgia fell some way behind Sunday's All-Ireland hurling final.
Interestingly, despite the shortage of numbers for Saturday's international, the viewing figures peaked (639,000) at 18:51 - just about the time Eamon Dunphy & co. were to reflect on a poor Irish result.
Knowing the value of what they have in the contentious pundit, Dunphy could be heard again last night on 2FM's Game On. Arguably, he delivered a performance that many had expected upon tuning in on Saturday evening.
Speaking ahead of Ireland's match with Serbia tonight, Dunphy is convinced that the players still,
want to play for Ireland. They'll fight until the bitter end and they've got some really good results. But when you take a closer look, for example Saturday's game. Shocking.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dunphy lays the brunt of the blame at the door of Martin O'Neill and his assistant, Roy Keane:
The team has no shape. [They've] been in charge now for three years. It doesn't have any recognisable identity ... it was badly-organised.
Suggesting that many of those playing on Saturday night were not aware of what their role in the team was supposed to be, Dunphy's criticism is unlikely to phase the managerial duo.
Yet, despite Dunphy's fondness for exaggeration and aggrandisement, there was an unerring sensibility to his break down of the shambles in Tbilisi:
Nobody was in a designated position. Harry Arter who plays for Bournemouth, who are a passing team with a top coach, Eddie Howe, he must have had a headache truing to come to terms with this. It was a shambles. There's no other word for it.
Although these loosely veiled criticisms of O'Neill and Keane were one thing, Dunphy proceeded to speculate as to what impact they were actually having on such a poorly organised side.
I don't know what Keane is doing and I don't know what they're looking at, what they're doing, what they're seeing on the training ground.
My suspicion is that they're not doing very much because you just couldn't get it that wrong.
I don't know what Keane does to be honest. He gives good press conferences.
Almost four years into the job, failure to qualify for the World Cup may not necessarily signal the end for the duo - perhaps enough good-will from Ireland's Euro 2016 performance remains.
However, with automatic qualification still in Ireland's hands as they host Serbia tonight, questions will be asked if Saturday's result against Georgia turns out to have been the beginning of the end for this manageable qualifying group.
