Did you stay to the end? I mean the very end, of the RTÉ broadcast. Through the interviews with Heimir, and Seamus and Troy, all the way to that signature moment in a sports producers night with the final wrap up and the choice of song. Did you?
I don’t know who was in the truck last night, or back at Montrose, it could have been the great Elaine Buckley, but whoever it was had to go for the loss option in their music choice.
We’ll never get to know what might have been played if things had been different but as it was , the choice of Dermot Kennedy’s The Refuge was brilliant in this moment.
The fact that the track was only released last month and that he is playing two sold out gigs in the Aviva this summer make it even sweeter, but of course it wasn’t sweet at all.
This was one of those nights. A campaign that had flickered with belief, stubbornness and flashes of brilliance. It reached a high with the win over Portugal, blasted off the scale of joy in Budapest, but then came to a brutal end with with the hard cruelty of penalties. A shootout that reduces months, even years, of effort into a handful of steps, a strike of a ball, a breath held too long.
And then, it’s over.
“We can’t know the end until it’s over.” goes the opening line of the song. It feels almost written for moments like this. Ireland never quite knew how far this journey might go, but they leaned into it anyway. They fought through the doubts, through the weight of expectation, through the familiar narrative that has too often followed them in recent campaigns.
There was courage in that.
There was also vulnerability. You could see it in the players as they stood on the halfway line, arms draped over shoulders, eyes fixed forward but minds racing. “Show your scars and let me pull you closer.” This team has carried its scars publicly — near misses, rebuilds, criticism, — but also quietly, in dressing rooms and long flights home from Yerevan.
They had come this far together.
The game itself will blur with time — the chances created, the moments missed, the fine margins that always seem to define nights like these. What won’t fade as quickly is the feeling. The sense that Ireland were close. Close to something that would have changed the narrative, lifted a nation, carried them back onto the biggest stage of all at the FIFA World Cup.
Instead, it ends here.
“I know the dark shows up more than we’d like,” continued Kennedy. There is a heaviness to exits like this, a familiarity that makes it harder, not easier. Irish football has lived in that space between hope and heartbreak for too long. Every campaign begins with belief, every setback asks the same questions. Nobody under the age of 40 will have any sentient memory of Italia Ninety of Stuttgart in ’88. Hardly anyone under 30 will remember our last World Cup Finals. That’s a generational loss.
But still, the players, the teams, and we the fans will come again.
That is the enduring truth of this team and those who follow it. They try to stand tall. They try to smile. They convince themselves, and sometimes us, that this time will be different.
But in this ending, penalties are merciless. They do not care about the story, the classrooms, the momentum, the memories. They strip everything back to a moment, and then another, until there is nothing left but outcome.
And then the chorus.
“Darling, I’m shaking tonight.” There was a fragility to Ireland in those final moments, but also a defiance. They stepped forward. They took responsibility. They didn’t hide.
That matters.
“Chasing a dream, but I’m tired.” You could feel that too — the emotional and physical toll of a campaign that asked everything. The long road, the pressure, the knowledge of what was at stake.
And yet, they kept going.
Because the final line is the one that will endure: “If we never make it, at least we can say we died trying.”
Thankfully, in this world of turmoil, nobody actually died last night.
There will be other campaigns. Other nights. Other chances to believe again. North Macedonia on Tuesday might be too soon, or it may be a show of collective support. Then there will be Austria, Kosovo and bloody Israel in the autumn. There are 75,000 people in Gaza who have actually died at the hands of that last named state, 75,000 reasons why we can only hope, and pray for an end to those hostilities. Add in the tiny matter of a couple of football matches.
But we will be back, we will step forward with flags and chants, with Credit Union loans and painted classroom windows. Just not this time.
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