Tommy Martin: Ireland had enough on their plate without inspiring generations

The chips place is closed, sorry.

“Please, can I get chips?!” 

There are no chips.

“I need chips!” 

And in many ways, failure to qualify for a major tournament is much like not getting chips – the shutters of the UEFA kiosk pulled shut at the moment of greatest hunger, leaving only regrets at chances missed and the second pack of Sour Patch Kids you ate during the first half.

When you bring 30-odd under-12 girls to the most important Irish women’s soccer match of a generation, you can’t expect them all to grasp its seismic nature right away. Some are mad into it and have made signs asking Courtney Brosnan for her gloves and donned facepaint that makes them look like Shrek on a Paddy’s Day bender.

Some simply see it as a chance to hang out with friends in a non-school environment. Others are vaguely aware that they are on some sort of outing relating to one of the many activities scheduled into their week – Scout group? Banjo class? Cuban hip-hop gymnastics? – but are sketchy on the exact details.

Shuffling out of the DART station at Grand Canal Dock, marching toward the Bath Avenue entrance, you try to explain the gravity of the situation. How Ireland are looking to qualify for a historic first ever Euros. How the tie is evenly poised and that the two teams are finely balanced. The potential for extra time and maybe even penalties.

“Can we stop in Spar to get sweets?” 

Go on, you’ve five minutes.

You don’t want to tell them that a lot of adults are afraid that if Ireland don’t make the Euros, they will all stop playing football and put on frilly pink dresses and spend all their time in their bedrooms mooning over posters of Timothée Chalamet.

These kids are, after all, beneficiaries of the great wave of enthusiasm for girls’ soccer that came off the back of Ireland qualifying for the 2023 Women’s World Cup. Many of them saw that Irish team on the world stage and were inspired, or at least encouraged by their parents, to fit soccer in between Bolivian nose flute classes and Tai Chi as Gaeilge.

They are Katie’s Kids, or Pauw’s Pups, depending on which side of that debate you came down on. Ergo, the fear is that if Ireland aren’t at the big dance, they’ll take their fickle attention spans elsewhere. They could be lost to soccer forever. Worse, their lives will stretch out ahead of them under the sinister yoke of the patriarchy, with nothing to look forward to but domestic drudgery and the occasional game of camogie.

You do wonder if all this is a bit much. A lot to put on a team. As the game unfolds and Ireland play with a sort of over-caffeinated intensity against a Welsh side who seem more composed and surer of themselves, you wonder whether all the inspo-talk has its down sides on nights like this.

Sure, it didn’t hurt Ireland at Hampden Park in 2022 when they did unto Scotland what Wales are now doing unto them, but you wonder if it’s the team that manages all this stuff better that comes out on top. Maybe for all her foibles, a dogmatic gameplan of the kind Vera Pauw was famous for is the best thing to get you through when the pressure is on.

It certainly seems that the Welsh head coach, Rhian Wilkinson, conducted the psycho-energy better than her Irish counterpart Eileen Gleeson. Wilkinson banging on incessantly about the physicality of the Irish approach in press conferences had the desired effect of winding up the opposition. Katie McCabe’s mad dog first half was the display of one who thought, if they think we’re physical, I’ll give them physical. It didn’t help things when it came to carrying the weight of the occasion.

There is always a fall out from Ireland’s failure to qualify for a major tournament. For the men the perilous finances of the FAI are invoked. For the women it is the future strength and participation in their sport. With the men it’s about the money, with the women it’s about the nurture. Funny that!

The Irish players are acutely aware of their roles in the bigger picture. They stay on for ages after matches signing autographs and taking selfies, flinging bits of their kit into the crowds of young girls who flock to the perimeter of the pitch at Tallaght Stadium or the Aviva. They are always asked about it and are happy to talk about it when asked. But maybe as professional athletes looking to perform on the biggest nights of their careers, they have enough going on without having to be agents of societal change as well.

At the end there was a deathly silence in the stadium broken only by the screams of joy from the Welsh contingent a few hundred strong in the corner of the North Stand. The kids as usual were right down the front, some of them there to console the distraught Irish players, others on the off chance they might get some free stuff.

They’ll stick at the soccer if it’s fun and well-organised and the coaching is good. The Irish team have done their bit. Afterwards, Ruesha Littlejohn talks some sense. “If I’m being honest, we really need to go into the grassroots here, we need to change our game, change our style,” said Littlejohn. “When you look at the best teams, they’re all so comfortable on the ball, they want the ball, they want to play.

“That’s the journey we’re on now, I think it’s going to start with the young ones coming through, everybody has to get better on the ball.” 

Failing that, just get them some chips.