It's a walk on the wild side. In perfectly ordered Japan this Irish World Cup adventure is a riot, a sun dance, an anarchic subversion of football logic. It defies analysis. Tom Humphries in Ibaraki on the Irish team's late late show.
Ninety-two minutes gone and old Niall Quinn shakes off his decrepitude. Robbie Keane, that impertinent whippersnapper, does the rest and suddenly the final whistle has gone and the Irish are doing the cancan in the Ibaraki night when minutes previously they'd lain dead in a narrow grave.
The Germans can watch only through the cracks in their fingers. Daft.
And so it goes on, this tale of the unexpected. Cameroon soundly drawn with. Germany the latest world power to be slaughtered one apiece. On to Yokohama next Tuesday, the inept Saudis in our way. And after that on to who knows where?
All that's certain is that their troubles have galvanised this team to the extent they are blood brothers and for all the wonder he provided us with perhaps no contribution from Roy Keane to his team was as great as his having left it when he was too unhappy to stay.
We conceded a goal early last night, a careless gift of a goal which left us with the old familiar hill to climb. Steeper perhaps. Germany, three times world champions, and masters of the percentage game against our furious passion? Surely the Germans would swat us like wanton boys.
The last 15 minutes of the first half offered some hope of salvation. Keane tried his luck with a bicycle kick under the disdainful eye of the imperious German keeper, Kahn. Then once or twice Duff dribbled like quicksilver and made believers of us again. And lo! A cross or two arrived without homing in on Kahn's gloves. Had we been given the option we would have worked through the tea break.
Half time in the Irish dressingroom was some kind of wonderful. The best laid plans being unravelled and recast in a cacophony of voices.
"We're an emotional lot," said Gary Breen afterwards. "We all had some kind of say." And they came back out and took up where they left off with the huffing and the puffing. The Kashima stadium burned with excitement as the Irish attacked the end behind which their fans were massed. The chances came and if they weren't spurned, they were snatched away by Kahn. And the clock rolled on, impervious.
The longer the Irish besieged the Germans, the more romantic and heroic the failure we seemed destined for. High in the stands we scribblers prepared our solemn obituaries. Honour in defeat, died as they had lived, etc etc.
Mick McCarthy was seeing a different ending though. He was going for a tall tale. Namely Niall Quinn. The long string of charm from Crumlin has been with us on practically every great Irish football occasion back to the time when crowds wore cloth caps and carried rattlers, but never has his impact been more concentrated or significant.
Old glory. Quinn's arrival set off a three-siren alarm in the German defence. The Irish didn't abandon principle but they abandoned caution, playing three players in attack, young Duff and Keane feeding parasitically of what Quinn pulled out of the air. And still the clock went about its business, not dawdling for even a curious second. Ninety minutes, ninety-one minutes . . . The ending needs no retelling really. Quinn's flick. Keane's bloody-minded persistence. The ball bouncing off Kahn and shuddering his net. Keane's trademark flip and then his disappearance under a heave of Irish bodies.
In the morning comes the reckoning. Cameroon play Saudi Arabia today. Assuming they win, the shakedown will be simple. Cameroon and Germany will play each other on Tuesday. They will have four points each. We will play Saudi Arabia and at start of play we will have two points. If the other game is a draw, we need to score more goals against the Saudis than Cameroon do. If Germany beat Cameroon, or if Cameroon beat Germany and we win, then we go through.
The odds have tilted in our favour. Summer gets dizzier. "Dunphy, Only A Game," said one banner in the Kashima last night. Only a game to make grown men cry.