IT’S NOT OFTEN that there’s cause to write a column about something that’s certainly not going to happen. 

In the end, Ireland’s World Cup play-off semi-final against Czechia played out more painfully than even the most pessimistic punter could have predicted (this sentence was brought to you by Peter Piper, and I didn’t even mention the word ‘penalties’). 

After defying all odds to reach a stage we had no real business reaching, getting a relatively comfortable draw, and going two goals up within 25 minutes… We should have sensed that something was amiss. Indeed, despite the gradual intensifying of the Dearg Doom riff in each of our minds over this past week, we should have known hope was never really ours to lose in the first place. 

When it comes to the on-pitch events of Thursday night, there is very little sense in running counterfactuals. Maybe if Ryan Manning doesn’t tug Ladislav Krejci’s jersey we go on to win 4-0, or maybe the Czechs redouble their efforts and put us to the sword in normal time. Maybe if Jayson Molumby’s strike from the edge of the box is an inch inside the post we secure a comfortable 3-1, but then we come into the Denmark game too complacent. Who’s to say? 

We can’t know what the eventual consequences of any individual on-pitch action might have been. What we do know, however, is what it means to not qualify for a World Cup. Indeed, we are experts in this field. When you take Saipan into consideration, we’re basically one of the only teams on earth that can make qualifying for the World Cup almost feel like not qualifying for the World Cup. And we’ve done it again. 

Even though there was but a slim chance we’d have cleared the Danish hurdle next week, it is a bitter goodbye that we say to our fantasies of what this summer might have been like. You know, bravely swallowing our moral qualms about playing an international tournament in an aggressively expansionist fascist state to get drunk in the middle of the night and scream at pub TVs demanding that Heimir Hallgrimsson bring on “Harvey Vale”, a player we had all heard of before this week, for some much needed creativity against a South Korean side that’s beating us 1-0. Oh, what could have been. 

All the way up until 11pm on Thursday, that hope was still alive. Across all media platforms, whether social, digital or traditional, we were each of us microdosing the feeling of what it would be like to actually qualify for a World Cup. The rushes of adrenaline, seeing more of the words ‘Opel’ and ‘Umbro’ than you have across the last 20 years combined, something for us all to focus on besides the drudgery of existence.

There would have been thousands of people walking the streets wearing those terrifying rubber parrot heads. Hours devoted to the strengths and weaknesses not only of the Mexican, South African and South Korean footballing teams but perhaps their economies, histories, and cultures as well, just to make sure we were all appropriately armed. Fontaines DC would have collabed with Kingfishr to bridge both strands of Irish society under the banner of the 2026 equivalent of Put ‘Em Under Pressure. 

It would have been another feather in our increasingly weighty cap of cultural soft power. Historically speaking, Irish football fans are an international goodwill machine. Even when we’ve humiliated ourselves on the pitch, as at the 2012 Euros, we tend to make it out with our reputation as Good Fans still intact. It’s sort of like sending an army of 10,000 Paul Mescals abroad to do singsongs and clean up after themselves. 

It’s rare enough that an event can be said to matter to just about all of us. Elections, maybe, but our success rate with those is little better than our footballing record. Once upon a time the Eurovision might have done it, but that’s been ruined for us as well. Even if you don’t like soccer, its social hold is inescapable, its power to unite and divide unmatched by anything else.

Footballing success is good for social cohesion. Ireland at a major international tournament has the potential to alter the trajectory of our culture. We write new songs, new phrases enter our lexicon, and we contrive new scandals that haunt us for decades. Had we qualified for the World Cup, it would have created new bonds between people, given us all something to look forward to. 

Instead, we all have to go back to pretending that we care about rugby. Oh, “test” matches, is it? Are you sure they’re not friendlies? A consolation prize that proves we’re better than Wales, England and Scotland? First of all, I should hope so. Secondly, let’s see how warm the Triple Crown keeps us in the summer when we’re watching England end up on the easy side of the knockout stages draw and coasting to a World Cup semi-final after beating like… Canada and Tunisia, or some bullshit. 

The good news is that there is, for the first time in 10 years, real hope for the Irish team. The even better news is that it will never be easier for us to qualify for an international tournament than Euro 2028, which we are co-hosting. The bad news is that instead of the next big event in Irish football being the World Cup, it’s two games against Israel, the vibes of which will be so rancid that it’s almost hard to contemplate ahead of time.

Ireland’s next major slate of fixtures will be accompanied by debate as to whether or not the games should go ahead at all, either for moral reasons or for the practical reality that it might be difficult to stage the games safely, given the widespread opposition amongst the Irish public to Israel’s genocide in Palestine. In short, the moment of hope that lasted from the final kick of our game against Hungary to the final kick of our game against Czechia is over, and what comes next will likely be experienced as a steep downturn in mood. 

After three solid — if not downright good — performances in a row, there is perhaps more excitement around the men’s Ireland team than there has been since the days of Euro 2016. Whether that can be maintained in the face of an inevitable political dispute that will consume players, management, fans, the FAI, and the government, remains to be seen.

But hey, it’s not as if there will be nothing else to do in Ireland this summer. For example, this week the world’s largest exhibition of cuckoo clocks opened in Ireland — and I don’t mean the Oireachtas! Eh? Eh?! Ah, we like to laugh.

But in all seriousness, Waterford’s Irish Museum of Time this week launched an exhibit of over 400 cuckoo clock timepieces, which obviously sounds like the kind of thing that David Lynch would design if his goal was to invent the most reliable way possible to make somebody go insane. 

Or at least as a close second, after supporting the Irish men’s national football team. 

© TheJournal