We Can't Know The End Until It's Over

We wake up to the sting of Ireland’s World Cup qualification exit and try to name what penalties do to a team, a campaign, and a nation watching. We linger on the RTE sign-off, Dermot Kennedy’s “The Refuge”, and the stubborn reason we still come back. 
• the cruelty of penalties as a shortcut to judgement 
• staying with the broadcast to the final wrap-up 
• why “The Refuge” fits the mood of heartbreak 
• belief after Portugal and the brutal end in Prague 
• courage, vulnerability, and players showing their scars 
• generational loss of World Cup memories in Irish football 
• returning again for North Macedonia and the autumn fixtures 
• holding sport beside the wider reality of Gaza 
If you want to find out more about our coverage of the commercial world of Irish sport, its social implications, its emotion at times like today, then you can find out at sportforbusiness.com. 

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Transcript

Welcome And The Painful Exit

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Just being here and putting our little nation on the map, it's just you know this is the stuff of of dreams for the church being it's spinning, it's spinning, challenge of sixty time for the church being done, and it's just present, hey, hello and welcome to the Sport for Business Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Hartnett, and this morning, Friday, March the 27th, I'm sad because the Republic of Ireland went out of the FIFA World Cup qualification campaign last night amidst the cruelty of penalties. But we have to bounce back. Here is a piece that we published this morning on that very subject. Did you stay to the end? I mean, the very end of the RTE broadcast. Through the interviews with Haimer and Seamus and Troy, all the way to that signature moment in a sports producer's night when the final wrap-up comes and the choice of song has to be made. 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 made it even sweeter, but of course it wasn't sweet at all. It was bitter sweet. In fact, it was bitter. 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 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. You can't know the end until it's over, goes the opening line of the song. The line 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 a vulnerability, and maybe that's why we got to really like this team so much. 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, carries on the song. This team has carried its scars publicly, through near misses, rebuilds, criticism, but also quietly in dressing rooms and long flights home from Yerevan. They had come a long way together. The game itself last night 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 was so close, so close to something that would have changed this summer, lifted a nation, carried them back onto the biggest stage of all at the FIFA World Cup. Instead, it ended in Prague. 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 a long time. Every campaign begins with belief, every setback asks the same questions. Nobody under the age of forty will have any sentient memory of Italia ninety, of Stuttgart in eighty eight. Hardly anyone under thirty 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. We try to stand tall, try to smile, convince ourselves, and sometimes beyond that, 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 the outcome. And then there's the chorus in the song. 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 lasted everything. The long road, the pressure, the knowledge of what was at stake. And yet they kept going. We kept going, we kept watching. 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 might be a show of collective support. Then there will be Austria, Kosovo, and Israel in the autumn. There are seventy five thousand people in Gaza who have actually died at the hands of that last name state. Seventy five thousand 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 regardless, we will be back. We will step forward with flags and chants, with credit union loans and painted classroom windows. Just not this time. Thanks for joining us. Our sport for business football coverage is brought to you in association with Sky Ireland. If you want to find out more about our coverage of the commercial world of Irish sport, its social implications, its emotion at times like today, then you can find out at sportforbusiness.com. We'll be back with more content, more events, more podcasts in the coming days. Thanks for your time.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

It's spinning, it's good.