There is a line in Don DeLillo's Underworld that reads "longing on a large scale is what makes history".
After a century of longing to beat the All Blacks, at last, we have the history.
But much of the population will now forever long that they'd seen it made.
As Conor Murray spotted a gap to widen the one on the scoreboard, eyeballs on RTE One were festooned with those cardboard exhortations to Grandmothers on Winning Streak.
As Simon Zebo sent most of Soldier Field mad, Wild Japan was drawing to a close on RTE Two.
As Ben Smith's absurd finish in the corner gave us a reality check, the unreality of the X Factor was on TV3.
If you were to flick on to RTE Radio One during the breathless closing stages, you would have heard some Irish ceili music.
The 2013 defeat to New Zealand felt like the latest smiting of the eternally damned, but there was at least the comfort in the sheer number of Irish fans suffering from Crotty In The Corner.
Yet last Saturday, Ireland finally shook off the mercury of unrelenting All Black misery, and it was tucked away on Eir Sport 2. Not even Eir Sport 1!
Perhaps this is the way it had to be, that if we were to ever beat New Zealand, it had to be as strange an occasion as possible; to break with tradition, we had to ignore it. A Saturday afternoon kick-off in Chicago, prefaced by Ireland's Call on a violin on Eir Sport 2 pretty much checks those boxes.
This is not to criticise Eir Sport's coverage: it was very good. Liam Toland was on co-commentary and is among the best rugby voices working in the media, and the assembled panel of Pat Lam, Gordon D'Arcy and Neil Francis is better than anything RTE served up in the pre-ROG and Horgan days.
The camera angles used were great as well: Garryowens seemed to go about twice as high as usual, and the sideline shot of an Irish scrum in the final few minutes, leading to the break that ended with Henshaw's try, with the steep stands looming overhead, felt iconic.
"It's an awesome day for this team and the 28 teams that have gone before us."@IrishRugby's @KearneyRob #IREvNZL https://t.co/pNT4IXDaBF
— Rugby on BT Sport (@btsportrugby) November 5, 2016
Rob Kearney told BT afterwards that the victory was for the 28 teams that have gone before, it was difficult not to think of the fans who had watched ceaseless defeat against New Zealand, only to miss the occasion in which it was finally set right. There wasn't even any live radio commentary to compensate either. The reality of the situation is that some Irish rugby games (usually the summer tour) have been hidden behind Pay TV for years, but it was very strange for the game not to be covered live on FM Radio.
To Eir's credit, they repeated the game free-to-air on Saturday, similar to how they've broadcast Dundalk's Europa League journey.
But if you didn't have the luxury of Pay TV, or couldn't get yourself to a pub, chances are you were deprived of the chance to soak in the rarest of occasions as it unfurled.
For decades, the distance between ourselves and the All Blacks felt like a chasm, but on the day we narrowed it, it was an oddly distant occasion.
Victory the ultimate ecstasy, but will be partly remembered for an odd level of obscurity.
The Wright Stuff
Gary Lineker is in the odd position of being Britain's most cogent and influential opposition to the current government, but his baiting by the Sun for the audacity of tweeting support for refugees has apparently gone unnoticed by Ian Wright. Have a look at this segment from Match of the Day, where Wright fails to respond in the way Lineker intended with this twitter gag:
