{"id":376092,"date":"2026-04-01T07:52:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/376092\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T07:52:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:52:08","slug":"joanne-cantwell-does-nothing-to-raise-broken-spirits-on-rte-for-ireland-v-north-macedonia-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/376092\/","title":{"rendered":"Joanne Cantwell does nothing to raise broken spirits on RT\u00c9 for Ireland v North Macedonia \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

More often than not, when telly stations want to soundtrack a sad montage, they use To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra. It\u2019s a lovely tune, but it\u2019s so plaintively, mournfully melancholic, you\u2019d end up dejected even it was used to soundtrack a clip of your reaction to winning the Lotto. <\/p>\n

RT\u00c9, Tuesday night, a montage of Ireland<\/a> losing on penalties in Prague featuring the crestfallen faces of players and supporters alike, the bottom having just fallen out of their footballing world. <\/p>\n

And it was soundtracked by To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now it\u2019s time to leave and turn to dust,\u201d goes the song, which might have been how Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson<\/a> and his crew felt when they left the Czech Republic last week. World Cup qualifying dreams reduced to, well, yes, dust. <\/p>\n

Joanne Cantwell did nothing at all to raise our broken spirits when she introduced RT\u00c9\u2019s coverage of the World Cup<\/a> qualifying losers\u2019 friendly against North Macedonia from the Irish dressingroom. <\/p>\n

\u201cAn empty room soon to be filled with empty hearts,\u201d she said. \u201cLansdowne feels like no man\u2019s land tonight. What does Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson say to his players to get them up for a match that none of them wants to play in?\u201d<\/p>\n

As intros go, that wasn\u2019t the most uplifting, but what else could you say on a night like this? It\u2019s little wonder that some of us turned over to The Dog House on Channel 4, where \u201cawkwardly large\u201d Scooby the Great Dane was looking for canine company. No spoilers, but: happy face.<\/p>\n

No happy faces back on RT\u00c9, though, Kenny Cunningham and Richie Sadlier having drawn the short straw \u2013 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. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ken Early: Ireland\u2019s loss to Czech Republic leaves us in a Kafkaesque nightmareOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Joanne: \u201cRichie, what\u2019s tonight about?\u201d<\/p>\n

Richie: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be here, let\u2019s just get that out of the way first … this is the lowest-stakes game of football you could be involved in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joanne: \u201cDo keep watching, please.\u201d <\/p>\n

But Kenny was having none of it. \u201cThis is the start of a new beginning, that\u2019s how I see it,\u201d he said, and he was positively spittin\u2019 about Bosun Lawal not starting in midfield. Indeed, he was so vexed by that non-selection, you\u2019d think we were playing Eng-er-land in Stuttgart or Italy in the Giants Stadium.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to be excited by the team sheet,\u201d he said, a feeling possibly not felt by a single other member of the nation, but the Labrador responded in a \u201ccool yer boots\u201d kind of way. \u201cI\u2019m not going to get overly energised about the starting team for a North Macedonia friendly that they don\u2019t want to play either,\u201d said Richie. <\/p>\n

Kenny: \u201cIt matters! To a small extent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richie: \u201cOkay, you do the hype job. It\u2019s the smallest lowest-stakes game.\u201d <\/p>\n

Kenny, then, was up for it, Richie most certainly wasn\u2019t, but, in fairness to Darragh Maloney, who had Ray Houghton for company, he did his level best. \u201cThis is the start of the healing process,\u201d he told us, before he and Ray came close to drifting off once the non-contest got under way. <\/p>\n

Over on Virgin Media Two, meanwhile, the Czech Republic v Denmark was getting under way. \u201cThe fixture that nobody wanted to be involved in is going on in Dublin,\u201d said Dave McIntyre, reminding us that if we\u2019d any sense we\u2019d have been sticking with Scooby\u2019s life choices.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot unexpected under the circumstances,\u201d said Richie. \u201cNo pace, no intensity to the thing at all, largely forgettable, as I predicted before.\u201d 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 Mak\u00e9l\u00e9l\u00e9. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

There was, at least, some comfort on the night \u2013 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More often than not, when telly stations want to soundtrack a sad montage, they use To Build a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,1842,112,4018],"class_list":{"0":"post-376092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376092","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=376092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}