If you were feeling upbeat when you tuned in to RTÉ, Jacqui Hurley soon sucked the joy out of you, noting that “the summer is over”, “an energy crisis is looming large” and all most households had to look forward to was “homework-filled evenings”.
Thanks Jacqui.
But, in fairness, she balanced that list of gloom with a reminder that the women of the Republic of Ireland, who have suffered no energy crisis at all in this campaign, could well qualify for the 2023 World Cup finals, and if they could win their last group outing — away to Slovakia — they’d inch another step along the way.
Not that most of us have a notion how these playoffs work; even Pythagoras would be left asking “wha?”, at one point it looking like we had to beat three-quarters of Europe before taking on the winners of Jupiter v Pluto for a place in the deciding qualifier against the champions of Antarctica or the runners-up in Australasia.
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Jacqui, though, reassured us that a win against Slovakia would simplify the process; it would move Ireland into the second round of the playoffs, which would be a very good thing. So, nothing less than a win would suffice in Senec.
And, to summarise, nothing less than a win was achieved, in a game that was as pretty as an oil spill, Denise O’Sullivan doing a typically Denise O’Sullivan thing by scoring the only goal of the contest.
Stephanie Roche, alongside George Hamilton in the commentary box, chose Jess Ziu as her player of the match, a perfectly fine choice, although this couch would have opted for Karen Duggan.
True, she wasn’t actually on the pitch, instead playing just to the right of Lisa Fallon back in RTÉ’s studio, but no matter — her contribution to the evening was stellar.
The very best thing about Karen Duggan is when she looks a touch menacingly through her spectacles on hearing platitudes about this Irish team, when the focus is shifted to their off-the-field activities rather than what they do on it.
As someone who has played with the bulk of the squad through her international career, she knows their capabilities better than most, so she’d evidently very much prefer the chat to be centred on what they could and should achieve.
So, when that chat harked back to Liberty Hall in 2017, when the squad took their stand against the FAI over their treatment, Karen was having none of it, even though she was part of that protest. “What went before is done now. Now is the time to look forward,” she said, and you wanted to hug yer telly.
Lisa, though made the not-unreasonable point that “they’re going out and proving that all of the battles that you guys fought were worth it, because now they’re showing why it mattered”. But both she and Karen were more interested in appraising this team in footballing terms, them being, you know, footballers.
“It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t something we’ll pull any highlights from, but job done,” said Karen of the win, 17 points from eight games in that group no mean feat.
But you have to love how she always expects more. “There’s room for improvement… we’re too eager to drop off, against better teams we will be punished… Diane Caldwell had a brain fart there.”
Vera Pauw, though, was beaming again when she met up with her old mucker Tony O’Donoghue, stopping just short of hailing Ireland’s hosts. “They were at times very nasty, I said this is an ugly game — but who cares?”
Who indeed.
On to the playoffs. Jacqui tried again to simplify it for us. Our possible opponents are the Netherlands, Iceland, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Slovenia, Portugal, Scotland or Bosnia and Herzegovina.
You’d hate to imagine Jacqui complicating it for us.
Karen and Lisa took a look at the list and weren’t quite sure where to start.
They agreed we want to avoid the Dutch. Iceland too. After that?
“Ideally,” said Karen, “you’re looking at the lower-ranked teams — your Bosnia and Herzegovinas.”
Hopefully the confidence levels are high enough to slay both your Bosnia and Herzegovinas, although you’d have a notion Pauw wouldn’t mind slaying the Dutch. But Jupiter, Pluto, whoever — we don’t mind.
