Here we go again, collectively. Keep it together at the back. Hang in there. Take a scrappy chance.
Can this Republic of Ireland team find some way to do it against Czech Republic on Thursday, and then somehow do it once more next Tuesday in the Aviva and beat either Denmark or North Macedonia to qualify for the World Cup? The year 2002 seems an awfully long time ago. The World Cup. A nation can hope.
You hear the Ireland supporters long before you see them in Prague, the usual chants rattling around the centre of the Czech capital’s old town. Hardly anybody has a ticket, but that doesn’t matter.
Several thousand have made the journey. They began arriving at the start of this week, but the flow of green football shirts into the city has picked up as the kickoff in the World Cup qualifier gets closer.
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“There’s some craic here,” says Seamus Burnes, from Co Tipperary, who is standing in Prague’s old town square, wearing a giant parrot mask, a nod to Troy Parrott, the great hope.
Burnes is trying to eat a sausage roll but keeps getting stopped by other fans and random tourists for selfies. “No ticket, but if there’s any tickets going, sort out The Parrot, will ye?,” he says.
Some had an easier time getting here than others.
Gavin Kelleher and James Doyle spent Tuesday night trying to sleep in Manchester Airport after a day of travel chaos.
“We just got here now, 15 hours later than expected,” Kelleher said in Prague on Wednesday morning. “We had a bit of a nightmare to be fair, originally we were supposed to go Cork to Manchester and get a connecting flight to Prague.”
The flight out of Cork was cancelled, so the 23-year-olds were redirected to Dublin. But by the time they caught a flight to Manchester their connecting one to Prague had left without them.
“We had to sleep in the airport for eight hours in Manchester,” Kelleher said. “It was tough, but we’re here now. That’s the important thing”.
The pair were among the lucky few who secured some of the meagre 1,024 tickets Ireland were allocated for the Thursday evening playoff against the Czech Republic in the 19,730-capacity Fortuna Arena.
Those without tickets plan to crowd into the cluster of Irish pubs in the middle of Prague. Some are so close to each other that Rory Delap could, in his prime, comfortably have launched a long throw-in from the front of one Irish bar and hit the door of another.
Confused tourists exploring the city on Wednesday stopped to stare at the terraces full of chanting Irish supporters. They’ve come from everywhere, catching direct flights from Ireland and connecting ones routed through Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and beyond. Prague is a place to be on Thursday, ticket or no ticket.
