More often than not, when telly stations want to soundtrack a sad montage, they use To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra. It’s a lovely tune, but it’s so plaintively, mournfully melancholic, you’d end up dejected even it was used to soundtrack a clip of your reaction to winning the Lotto.
RTÉ, Tuesday night, a montage of Ireland losing on penalties in Prague featuring the crestfallen faces of players and supporters alike, the bottom having just fallen out of their footballing world.
And it was soundtracked by To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra.
“And now it’s time to leave and turn to dust,” goes the song, which might have been how Heimir Hallgrímsson and his crew felt when they left the Czech Republic last week. World Cup qualifying dreams reduced to, well, yes, dust.
Joanne Cantwell did nothing at all to raise our broken spirits when she introduced RTÉ’s coverage of the World Cup qualifying losers’ friendly against North Macedonia from the Irish dressingroom.
“An empty room soon to be filled with empty hearts,” she said. “Lansdowne feels like no man’s land tonight. What does Heimir Hallgrímsson say to his players to get them up for a match that none of them wants to play in?”
As intros go, that wasn’t the most uplifting, but what else could you say on a night like this? It’s little wonder that some of us turned over to The Dog House on Channel 4, where “awkwardly large” Scooby the Great Dane was looking for canine company. No spoilers, but: happy face.
No happy faces back on RTÉ, though, Kenny Cunningham and Richie Sadlier having drawn the short straw – they were on punditry duty for the game. Kenny was kind of the perfect pick for the occasion, though, him taking on the character of a cranky and argumentative Chihuahua in the build-up, him wanting no company at all, while Richie, his companion, was more akin to a kindly but despondent-looking Labrador.
[ Ken Early: Ireland’s loss to Czech Republic leaves us in a Kafkaesque nightmareOpens in new window ]
Joanne: “Richie, what’s tonight about?”
Richie: “We don’t want to be here, let’s just get that out of the way first … this is the lowest-stakes game of football you could be involved in.”
Joanne: “Do keep watching, please.”
But Kenny was having none of it. “This is the start of a new beginning, that’s how I see it,” he said, and he was positively spittin’ about Bosun Lawal not starting in midfield. Indeed, he was so vexed by that non-selection, you’d think we were playing Eng-er-land in Stuttgart or Italy in the Giants Stadium.
“I wanted to be excited by the team sheet,” he said, a feeling possibly not felt by a single other member of the nation, but the Labrador responded in a “cool yer boots” kind of way. “I’m not going to get overly energised about the starting team for a North Macedonia friendly that they don’t want to play either,” said Richie.
Kenny: “It matters! To a small extent.”
Richie: “Okay, you do the hype job. It’s the smallest lowest-stakes game.”
Kenny, then, was up for it, Richie most certainly wasn’t, but, in fairness to Darragh Maloney, who had Ray Houghton for company, he did his level best. “This is the start of the healing process,” he told us, before he and Ray came close to drifting off once the non-contest got under way.
Over on Virgin Media Two, meanwhile, the Czech Republic v Denmark was getting under way. “The fixture that nobody wanted to be involved in is going on in Dublin,” said Dave McIntyre, reminding us that if we’d any sense we’d have been sticking with Scooby’s life choices.
Not to be too detailed about it, but somebody eventually won between the Czech Republic and Denmark, one of them going to the World Cup, one of them having their hopes turned to dust. Back in Dublin, it was scoreless at half-time.
“Not unexpected under the circumstances,” said Richie. “No pace, no intensity to the thing at all, largely forgettable, as I predicted before.” Kenny snapped at his heels, as Chihuahuas tend to do, bemoaning the continuing non-introduction of Bosun Lawal. By now, the viewers would have thought the Stoke City lad was a blend of Zidane, Xavi, Iniesta, Pirlo and Makélélé.
Predictably enough, perhaps, it ended 0-0, the greatest relief, possibly, in the entire history of Irish sport the final whistle. Which really should have been soundtracked by The Cinematic Orchestra.
There was, at least, some comfort on the night – Scooby found some canine company: Jelly Bean. Who looked, as it happens, like a cross between Kenny, Richie and Bosun Lawal. New beginnings for Scooby; hopefully, soon enough, for this Irish team too.