![\"Bernard](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4865385_2_articleinline_Screen_20res-07681.jpg\" "\\"Bernard")
Bernard O’Shea: “The great nights only feel great because you\u2019ve lived through the hard ones.”<\/p>\nWe went to matches all year… Tuesday nights, Saturdays, qualifiers, friendlies… the whole lot. And somewhere between the floodlights, the queues, the chants, the traffic, the cold, the shouts of ‘press him!’ and the half-time chips, my kids learned things I wish I\u2019d learned at their age.<\/p>\n
\n 1. There will be more frustrating nights than glorious ones \u2014 which is exactly why the glorious ones matter\n <\/p>\n
We\u2019ve had evenings this year where the Aviva felt like a collective therapy session. My kids felt that tension immediately. Young kids always know when a crowd is hopeful, when it\u2019s resigned, and when it\u2019s crossed into that very Irish mood of \u201cwe\u2019re not angry \u2014 just disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were games where we tried hard but couldn\u2019t score when it mattered. Games where we clung on. Nights where the stadium groaned in unison as another chance went inches over. And yet at the end of every single one, my two turned to me and said: \u201cDad, that was brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because for them, the night is bigger than the score. They\u2019ve begun to realise that the frustrating nights \u2014 the tight ones, the sloppy ones, the ‘nearlys’ \u2014 are part of the deal. That the great nights only feel great because you\u2019ve lived through the hard ones.<\/p>\n
\n 2. Tuesday nights in winter are cold \u2014 very cold \u2014 and sometimes the most important lessons are practical ones\n <\/p>\n
There is a specific wind that lived in Lansdowne Road that The Aviva Stadium inherited. A bone-seeking, unforgiving blast that sneaks up your sleeves and makes your knees feel 200 years old. And the kids learned quickly that no amount of layers can protect you once you\u2019ve conceded a soft goal in the 42nd minute. Cold and disappointment work together like a tag team.<\/p>\n
Half of parenting is lying, so I hit them with all the classics:<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u201cWe\u2019ll warm up once the game starts\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u201cThe crowd will heat you\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s actually not that cold\u201d<\/p>\n
All lies.<\/p>\n
Bernard O’Shea: “The great nights only feel great because you\u2019ve lived through the hard ones.”<\/p>\n
Then came the greatest practical lesson of all \u2014 one of the few pieces of wisdom I\u2019ve ever successfully passed down:<\/p>\n
Never buy your scarf before the match.<\/p>\n
Before kickoff, the stalls were flogging them for \u20ac15. I held my nerve and said, \u201cLads\u2026 trust me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Full-time: \u20ac5. Same scarf. Same fella. Same stitching. \u20ac10 saved.<\/p>\n
My daughter looked at me like I\u2019d parted the Red Sea. My son declared me \u201cbusiness smart”. For one shining moment, I was the Warren Buffett of Lansdowne Road.<\/p>\n
\n 3. Hard work beats talent (my daughter turned into Roy Keane)\n <\/p>\n
Twenty minutes into the Portugal match, my daughter leaned over \u2014 very calm, very matter-of-fact \u2014 and said: \u201cDad\u2026 we\u2019re running a lot more than them and we don\u2019t even have the ball.\u201d The tone. The judgement. The forensic disdain. If she\u2019d followed it with \u201cbut someone needs to take responsibility in the final third,\u201d I\u2019d have needed smelling salts.<\/p>\n
And she was right.<\/p>\n
Ireland may not always be the most technically gifted team, but commitment is never optional. We press. We chase. We chase lost causes. We track back like we\u2019re being paid by the kilometre. And sometimes, that\u2019s the thing that lifts a stadium.<\/p>\n
\n 4. Sticking with something \u2014 through good times and bad \u2014 is where real loyalty comes from\n <\/p>\n
This was the year my kids learned that loyalty isn\u2019t about winning.<\/p>\n
If loyalty depended on winning, every child in Ireland would support France or Argentina. Loyalty is choosing to keep showing up \u2014 even when the results don\u2019t. It\u2019s understanding that sometimes the journey home is quieter than the journey in, and that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n
And watching them learn that brought me straight back to my early matches.<\/p>\n
Back then, it wasn\u2019t the plush, structured Aviva. It was the terraces. We were tiny \u2014 swallowed by grown men, lifted and swayed like plastic bags in a storm every time the ball went near the box. You didn\u2019t stand; you were held up by the collective sway.<\/p>\n
And the main environmental hazard wasn\u2019t the wind \u2014 it was the rivers of wee that flowed down steadily and without apology. Avoiding them was a sport in itself.<\/p>\n
Football back then was gladiatorial. It built character mostly by trying to break you. And this year, standing with my kids at a modern stadium with chips at half-time, toilets that actually exist, and seats where you\u2019re not performing survival gymnastics, I realised something profound:<\/p>\n
\u2014 I like modern football.
\u2014 I like that my kids aren\u2019t undergoing a trial.
\u2014 I like that they can see the pitch and eat chips without needing counselling.<\/p>\n
Football shouldn\u2019t feel like a punishment. It should feel like belonging.<\/p>\n
\n 5. Never leave early \u2014 because the magic usually comes late, and hope is a terrible, brilliant thing\n <\/p>\n
Every Irish child must learn two contradictory truths:<\/p>\n
Hope will break your heart.You should still hope anyway.<\/p>\n
Football teaches that like nothing else.<\/p>\n
Before every match, the kids ask \u201cWill we win tonight?\u201d And all I can honestly say is \u201cMaybe\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hope is the engine of Irish sport. It\u2019s irrational. It\u2019s risky. It\u2019s occasionally humiliating. And yet it keeps you coming back. But it comes with rules \u2014 and chief among them is this:
Never, ever leave early. If you leave on 85 minutes, you are basically summoning the football gods to produce something spectacular the second your foot hits the steps. A last-minute equaliser. A deflected winner. A penalty shout. A save you\u2019ll talk about for the rest of your life.<\/p>\n
And when the next magical night comes, the one we\u2019ve all been waiting for, my kids will know exactly why it matters. Because they\u2019ve lived every kind of night along the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We went to matches all year… Tuesday nights, Saturdays, qualifiers, friendlies… the whole lot. And somewhere between the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[46179,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-149280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-bernard-oshea","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}