View so very bleak from desolation row

Group D Cyprus v Republic of Ireland: In the lift on the way down to the mixed zone a young fella, in or around the age of two, is dancing and whooping and cheering. His guardians giggle. He's punching the air in a mildly frenzied manner, his spiked hair would have danced too in rhythm to his giddy celebrations if it wasn't for the overdose of gel. Fixed to the spot, not unlike the Irish defence for the preceding 90 minutes.

"Hap-pee?" we ask the young fella's guardians, in our best Cypriot accent. "Yes," says the man, "he is the son of the number nine." We consult the back of the very tiny Cypriot jersey he's wearing. Daddy is Ioannis Okkas, who, with his Olympiakos partner, Michalis Constantinou, had been responsible for much of the carnage inflicted on Ireland.

At two years of age, Okkas Jr can't have all that many international games under his belt, so must now be living under the impression that Cyprus are a world footballing power and Ireland one of its minnows, down there with San Marino and the Faroe Islands. Maybe he's right.

The players are emerging from their respective dressingrooms. Kevin Doyle and Liam Miller are the first to emerge. Injuries in football are a curse, but at least their names will not be attached to that farce.

Thereafter, one by one, the players, waving away requests for "a word" are shepherded to the team bus by a security man, who informs us they've been told not to speak to the press. Told by whom? A shrug. "Don't know."

Richard Dunne has, evidently, been in tears, wearing an expression, as he walks by, that suggests this night will haunt him forever. Paddy Kenny, the same.

Damien Duff appears. A word? "Yeah," he says, as more team-mates drift by. But then he struggles to find any word to sum up how he feels about what happened out on that pitch.

"Devastating, really. The score says it all. A lot of bad defending, but that starts from the front with us lot, but the goals we gave away were a joke," he says.

Did the penalty kill it off? "No, I wouldn't say that, there was still 40 minutes to go, but we didn't react like we did in the first half when we went 2-1 down, so it was very disappointing that way. We were positive going out in the second half, we still thought we'd win the game, we were expecting to win the game, I don't know if that was our downfall or what. They're all devastated in there, a terrible night."

We're almost afraid to remind him there's another game on Wednesday, how can he and his team-mates possibly lift themselves in time for it? "Well, we're going to have to," he says, "there's an uphill struggle now to qualify, when you come away to places like this you have to be getting points, so it's just not acceptable dropping points here, even a draw wouldn't have been acceptable."

Hard for the fans to watch a team ranked 50 places below you playing you off the park? "Definitely, yeah. I think it shows where we're at really. This time last year I think there were 15,000 Irish here, a lot less tonight, we put in another disappointing performance then, another one tonight, so we have to lift ourselves and give the fans something to cheer about," he sighs, before saying his goodbyes. It was bad enough playing in that game without having to talk about it.

Robbie Keane is next out. When he accepted the captaincy from Steve Staunton he hadn't bargained for nights like this.

"It's a hard one, there's not really anything I can say. We let ourselves down, we let our fans down and let everyone else down. That's a killer more than anything else," he says.

"It's just very hard to put it in to words, especially with the emotions there, it's probably the worst night of my football career, but we have to take responsibility, pull together, and look forward to Wednesday, as much as we can. It's going to be difficult but it's up to us as players to pull together. We know we're going to get criticised in the next few days but we have to big enough and strong to accept that.

"We got a good start, just like last year, and we reminded ourselves of what happened then, but you can't legislate for what happened tonight. Of course it's going to be difficult to pick ourselves up, but that's the thing in football, there's always another game."

He can't, though, explain it. "It's no excuse that Steve (Staunton) was missing (from the bench). With a performance like that we can't blame any one, not even the referee - I thought he had a poor game - but we have to accept it ourselves as players, there's no hiding from it, that wasn't good enough."

Not good enough? Not even close.