Gnawing suspicion that this is going down to the wire

TV VIEW:"IT'S BEEN harrowing," said a drained Darragh Moloney, and that was with 50 minutes – plus added time – still to go.

“We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth,” said Ronnie Whelan, gnawing his knuckles.

“Getting to half-time is going to be a serious achievement,” said Darragh, gnawing his and Ronnie’s knuckles.

A testing first-half then, although if you exclude all those Shay Given saves, Richard Dunne and Damien Duff clearances off the line and the other 36 Russian near misses, there was actually nothing in it.

That’s how Bill O’Herlihy was determined to view it too: “Let’s celebrate! Scoreless at half-time!” His panel, surprisingly, didn’t share Bill’s buoyancy.

“That’s the good news, Bill,” said Liam Brady, “the bad news is that we’re taking a hiding.” That, of course, burst Bill’s buoyant bubble, prompting him to ask Eamon Dunphy if it was worse “than we anticipated?”

“Yes,” he said, in a word.

John Giles conceded that it was worse than he expected too, although he comforted Bill by insisting that he believes in miracles. “You sexy thing,” Bill didn’t reply, which is probably just as well. A black eye would have been unseemly when he returned from the break.

“Would you expect changes, John?” asked Bill.

“Well, whatever we do would probably be an improvement, it couldn’t be much worse,” said Gilesie. “Although, if the players on the bench are that good, they’d be on the pitch.”

So, Bill’s “the bottle may seem empty but I reckon it’s half-ish full” efforts were falling on deaf ears, even his efforts to account for Stephen Ward’s first-half struggles being dismissed.

Were his positional difficulties down to the plastic pitch, he wondered. “He never played on one before.”

“God Bill,” said Gilesie, “you know what position you’re in on the pitch whether it’s plastic or grass or aluminium.”

Eamon, meanwhile, wanted the subs bench cleared. “I’d bring on Hunt. McCarthy. And Foley too.”

“What about Ward, do you want someone on for him as well?” asked Gilesie.

“We can’t take them all off, John,” said Eamon. “That’s what I mean,” came the reply.

Bill wondered if there was any hope, in light of the fact that 11 changes couldn’t be made.

The panel was doubtful. “This is life or death, Bill,” said Eamon, which had Bill nigh on ordering a wreath.

Second-half, as you were, no changes. For a bit, anyway.

“We don’t deserve anything, but you never know, with 10 or 12 minutes to go . . .” said Ronnie, just before another Russian effort was cleared off the line. There were no knuckles left to gnaw.

Full-time. 0-0. Seriously.

“Russia could have won the match 6-0,” said Bill.

Liam disagreed. “They could have won it 5-0.”

“They had 26 attempts on goal,” said Bill. “Is that all,” said Liam and Gilesie as one.

Eamon paid tribute to the Irish rearguard effort by suggesting the Russians had "punched themselves out", proclaiming the game to be football's version of the Rumble in the Jungle. Then he called for some "radical surgery" to the team.

The consensus, though, was that Trapattoni wasn’t the man to carry out the operation, that he was happy enough to leave the patient untreated, reckoning it was healthy enough to see off Andorra and Armenia.

Armenia? Well, they’re hardly going to shake the group up.

Breaking news: Slovakia 0, Armenia 4. And, let’s be honest, which one of us didn’t back that scoreline?

“I suspect Trapattoni believes in the tooth fairy after that,” Bill had said – of the result in Moscow, not in Zilina.

So, we’re not done yet. The permutations are simple enough: If we beat Andorra and Armenia, and Russia and Slovakia draw or beat each other, before Slovakia draw or lose to Macedonia and Russia are surprisingly held at home by Andorra, or beat them handsomely, then . . .

Look, it’s not over yet. If you’ve any knuckles left, get gnawing.