Enough. Enough. Bring us the head of John Delaney

Nightmare on Jones's Road. Last night the national team bumbled about in a space too grand for them against a team too good for them. Croke Park. Cyprus. This was mortifying.

Enough is enough.

Not for Steve Staunton.

"I've been given a job to do and I'm going to see it through," he told us, his jaw jutting defiance afterwards. There was water lapping around his lapels as he gripped the helm of the Titanic and gazed manically into the future.

Where this latest farrago leaves us in terms of the glorious four-year plan is anybody's guess. Including Steve's.

Where did it all go wrong, Boss?

"I don't know," he said reassuringly, "I can't tell you that. It was just not good enough. The players, although there are a few young ones, just have to learn quick. We are getting indifferent performances because of the youth in the side."

Aha! Youth! The enemy of promise!

It is not for us mortals to ask about such things as four-year plans on a night when evidence of a 90-minute plan would have been sufficient. If you hand the national team over as instruments for a tone deaf novice to learn on, this sort of tuneless mess is what you get.

"We didn't pass the ball," said the conductor of the orchestra, "we didn't hold it, we didn't mark, we didn't do anything tonight. We got out of jail."

We nodded disbelievingly.

Had somebody put a spell on us?

What was it, Gaffer?

Somebody asked about Joey O'Brien. Uhm, why had he played in midfield?

"Joey didn't play centre half either for a number of years," said Steve tartly, "we know he is a good passer of the ball, he showed that in training. Unfortunately, tonight he didn't pass the ball well." Ah well.

Ireland were booed at half-time and booed again early in the second half when Marios Illia stabbed a low shot past Shay Given and off the Irish post. That miss copper-fastened our suspicion that we had sunk to our level, scrapping it out with Cyprus among the also rans. And the team were booed with 10 minutes left when Stelios Okkarides arose unimpeded to head home a merited goal. And the team were booed when it finished, Steve Finnan's late equaliser having done little to diminish the sense of national embarrassment.

The Gaffer felt that the booing was appropriate. Didn't offend him in the least. He'd have booed himself.

"Not at all. I feel sorry for them. They are fully within their rights to boo. We were just not good enough. It wasn't good enough in the first half. It was slightly better in the second half. We didn't get enough tackles in. We didn't keep the ball. We couldn't pass it. We were running around chasing it."

The pity was that the foot-soldiers carried the can while the generals swanned about on the premium level. That Steve Staunton wasn't up to this task was always evident. Those who employed him should be looking for work this morning. Instead, there were calls for The Gaffer's head.

"Yes, from a section in the corner, I accept that. I don't feel that, though. I know what I am trying to do. I know the players we have got out right now. We are only a small nation and we need our big players. It will make life easier for the younger ones when we have a full squad. I'm not putting any spin on tonight and the players know it just wasn't good enough. Going into the World Cup, we know we will have to do better."

Back in the days when the great debate over opening Croke Park for soccer was rumbling on, many hours were devoted to calculating the precise number of revolutions per minute at which great Gaels would spin in their graves on nights like this.

We never paid sufficient attention to the whirring which might be done in the vaults holding the bones of soccer men. Ireland's relentless mediocrity was an insolent betrayal of a tradition and a culture which grew out of a fierce pride and an unlikely genius for playing this game with a style and passion which expressed the national personality.

The insult to that tradition has not been uttered by the hapless Steve Staunton, who as a player was the embodiment of what Irish soccer was about, but by the empty suits who employed him.

"How did it make me feel? Not nice. You have to credit the spirit, though. We scored a goal in the last minute. We got out of jail."

Is a home draw with Cyprus really getting out of jail, somebody asked.

Was it worse than Nicosia or San Marino? Why bother calibrating the degrees of abjectness? In terms of the Staunton era this was just a level of mediocrity commensurate with what we have come to expect, but still can't quite accept.

"I thought our defending was very poor," Stan was saying when we tuned in again. "Cyprus might see their goal as a good goal. From our point of view it's a shocker, though."

Shocker. Embarrassment.

Enough. Enough. Enough.

Bring us the head of John Delaney.