Maybe it was an off day or maybe they were just out of their depth, but things definitely didn't go to plan for the Irish teams in the European Cross Country Championships in Switzerland. They left the town of Thun with their pride salvaged only by a fine individual run from Anne Keenan-Buckley.
The senior men went into yesterday's race intent on repeating the bronze medal performance of a year ago but, unable to mix it with the leaders over the six miles, those hopes soon collapsed, and they ended up 10th of the 12 teams.
SΘamus Power gave the best individual performance, finishing in 29th place, and that was probably as bad a run as the Clare athlete could have imagined.
Even more disappointed will be Gareth Turnbull (60th) and Peter Mathews (66th), who were clearly well below their best (both finished in the top 25 last year). The cool, still conditions and flat course should have been to their liking and there can be no hiding their failure to perform as expected.
Both Vinnie Mulvey and Martin McCarthy managed mid-pack finishes with 37th and 46th place respectively, but that was never going to be enough to impact on the team placing.
Up front though, it was a race of true quality, and the Irish seemed to be caught badly by the pace. Sergiy Lebid of the Ukraine repeated his win of three years ago with a quite stunning display of front running, clocking 27 minutes 52 seconds.
Kamiel Maase took silver for Holland and just five seconds separated third and 10th, with the latter place being filled by defending champion Paulo Guerra of Portugal.
Spain won the team award with 40 points, followed by France (50) and Portugal (72). Hosts Switzerland (171) edged the Irish (172) out of ninth place.
The Irish senior women did a far better job and for a while looked capable of sneaking into the medals. Keenan-Buckley gave a typically gutsy display and didn't wait around, rewarding herself with a 13th place finish. Rosemary Ryan faded somewhat but still managed a creditable 23rd, followed by Una English (37th) and Valerie Vaughan (43rd).
The finishes of Breda Dennehy-Willis (50th) and Maria McCambridge (66th) were well below expectations, however.
That gave Ireland a fifth-place team finish - a one-place improvement on last year but still a little short of their target.
Portugal took the top honour ahead of Britain, while France's bronze medal was built on a classy individual win for Yamna Belkacem.
The leaders approached the finish like a track race, and Belkacem's superior sprint was enough to edge out Olga Romanova of Russia by just a second. She won in 15:48.
Portugal's Justyna Bak took third while Olivera Jevtic of Yugoslavia had to settle for fourth.
There was a solid individual run in the junior men's race when William Harty of Waterford came home in 14th place, just 30 seconds behind another Ukrainian winner, Vaseliy Matviychuk, who clocked 19:29.
Martin Fagan was next home in 31st, closely followed by Mark Christie in 36th and Robert Wade in 37th.
Their sixth-place team finish was as good as they would have hoped for. Britain won, thanks in part to second-placed Mohammed Farah.
The Irish junior women were left in the lowest form after their 13th and last place in the team race. Kate O'Neill was the best of them way back in 73rd place and the scale of the disappointment was reflected in the points, with their total of 303 a depressingly long way off the winners Russia, who totalled just 35.
Turkey, a country of virtually no cross-country tradition, took third place in the team race and Britain managed to win another set of medals by taking second - adding to the senior women's silver and junior men's gold.
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