Wild hope and despair are often the two default emotions of Irish football supporters -blame Trap and Stan - but this tournament felt doomed very early on. We lost to Belarus in Cork. Roy Keane threw his players under the bus the next day. Ireland were the oldest team in the tournament, never a good thing to be. We had Sweden on the ropes and we couldn't finish the job. We imploded against Belgium. I was there. Lukaku and de Bruyne seemed to expose us as a limited, unambitious side, making up the numbers at a bloated tournament.
And yet.
And yet.
And yet.
What happened to the Ireland team since Wednesday - since Martin O'Neill shuffled his deck and put hope in youth -has restored all faith in the future in the Irish football team. We have a captain, a core of a team to build around and we have a manager who inspires them. Robbie Brady is 24. Jeff Hendrick is 24. They were our two best players this tournament. Shane Duffy is only 24 - he showed glimpses these last two games that we can build a defense around him. Long, Coleman, McCarthy, McClean, Keogh, Randolph are all under 30. Harry Arter is still to come into the team.
Yes, we wasted the Wes years. Yes, Robbie Keane will be impossible to replace. But there are so many things to be optimistic about. Stephen Ward was the only 30-year-old to start today. We have a midfield all of a sudden. A midfield!
And most importantly, the emotional highs of this tournament have forged a bond between this team and the Irish public. The ghouls of Gdansk and the Stan years have been exorcised.
The prevailing memories of this tournament will be the strange, intoxicating sight of Ireland playing football. In the first half of the Sweden game. Across the entire Italy game. For the first 55 minutes of the France game, until the mental challenge of defending that goal drained us. Belgium feels like the exception not the rule.
World Cup qualifying starts September 5 in Belgrade. We have a team to get behind. Russia is something we can push for.
