EURO 2012 PLAY-OFF, SECOND LEG: Rep of Ireland 1 Estonia 1 (agg 5-1): THE SHOW may not have materialised in the end but few celebrations can ever have started more punctually than last night's at the Aviva stadium.

With the overall outcome a foregone conclusion and the game just petering out at a goal apiece, Dutch referee Bjorn Kuipers seemed to decide that adding time for injuries f would be to unnecessarily detain people on a week night and so he brought Ireland’s campaign to what was, technically, a slightly premature end.

The decision seemed to be generally well received and some of the supporters may well have enjoyed the 10 minutes that followed more than they did what was generally a flat and uninspiring game.

In more ways than one it mattered little. The Irish had done sufficiently well the course of their 10 group games to make the play-offs and comfortably enough on Friday in Tallinn to get through them.

The only pity last night was that they did not succeed in raising themselves much above the level to going through the motions so as to win the game and turn what was a nice occasion into an unforgettable one.

They did lead the game thanks to Stephen Ward’s first competitive goal for his country and threatened for a while to push on and win well. As has so often been the case, however, Giovanni Trapattoni’s men lost their way for long spells when they should have been marching forward and conceded the softest of goals after 57 minutes.

Anything less than a draw at the end would, in truth, have been harsh on the Estonians who may now find themselves more fixated than ever on the decisions made by the referee in the first leg.

Ireland, in reality, won that and the tie overall but they simply proved incapable last night of sending a message to potential rivals at next summer’s finals that they will be a force to be reckoned with.

There was a strange feeling about it all beforehand.

The team doesn’t qualify for major championships all that often and when they do it’s generally a far more anxious affair. Here, there was an unmistakable hint of celebration about it all from the moment the teams emerged from the tunnel.

That the Irish players received a rousing reception was scarcely a surprise in the circumstances but the scale of the welcome for new President Michael D Higgins was impressive too.

It was a nice moment but then it was run close minutes later by the image on the stadium’s big screens of Damien Duff, facing the wrong way and in what looked almost like trance, belting out Amhrán na bhFiann.

His sense of pride was unmistakeable and from his team-mates there was the usual passion as they set about settling into a game that they could afford to lose but clearly wanted to win.

The crowd showed a willingness from early on to enter enthusiastically into the spirit of things.

When a few moments passed without anything much to cheer the place nearly erupted over a misplaced pass by Ragnar Klavan. The almost pleading cries of “shoot” when the ball fell to Glenn Whelan some 50 metres out with the Estonian goalkeeper off his line suggested that the team’s success had finally reconnected it with a constituency outside of the its hard core support.

Still, the fans were more bewildered than amused when the Irish passed up their first really good chance of the night.

In what looked a well-rehearsed free kick from the left hand side of the area, Stephen Hunt pushed the ball square to Duff whose first--time shot flew threw the legs of Taavi Rahn and forced a slightly shaky stop by Pavel Lomak who turned the ball directly back into the path of the Irish skipper. Robbie Keane had only to pick his spot from a few yards out but he could only fire a couple of feet the wrong side of the left hand post.

By that stage the striker had already been refused a penalty that really would have been harsh on the Estonians and he looked a decent enough bet to add to the two goals he got out in Tallinn, his sixth and seventh of this qualifying campaign.

As it was to turn out, however, Duff was to have the better time of things.

The Fulham winger played a major part in the first goal and generally looked to be enjoying himself out wide where he was a constant threat. He won a steady supply of frees and did a fine line in exasperation whenever the referee didn’t see things his way.

For the goal, he provided first a neat lay off for Ward whose cross was cut out by the generally impressive Klavan.

From the subsequent corner kick Kevin Doyle arrived late to head well but without much power towards the bottom right corner. Londak stopped the ball getting there but managed only to tee up Ward who finished coolly from close range.

There were some spells at that stage of confident football from the home side but their ball retention was again poor at times and they really didn’t carve out the number of chances they might have been expected to against opponents of this calibre.

More alarming, though, was their defending for the goal. All weekend Irish players talked about how they had been warned about Konstantin Vassiljev’s inclination to shoot from long range and yet here Glenn Whelan lost him far too easily 25 yards out before Sean St Ledger was wrong-footed by a strike that Shay Given really should have kept out.

Though Hunt had generally done well, Aiden McGeady made a difference when he came on but he fluffed a really good opportunity to set up either Keith Andrews of Duff for what surely would have been a goal.

Keane, Doyle, who had his moments, and Simon Cox all might have got a winner but it was far from being one-way traffic and the Estonians came close once or twice themselves to salvaging a little more pride.

Trapattoni seemed to miss a trick too by failing to bring on James McCarthy or give Seamus Coleman, who didn’t even make the bench, a competitive debut; either of which would have further lifted the crowd.

However they were not going to go home unhappy once they had a European Championships to look forward too. Their manager and players, one suspects, still have some work to do if their time in Poland and Ukraine is to be quite as well received.

REP OF IRELAND:Given (Aston Villa); O'Shea (Sunderland), Dunne (Aston Villa), St Ledger (Leicester), Ward (Wolves); Duff (Fulham), Andrews (Ipswich Town), Whelan (Stoke City), Hunt (Wolves); Keane (LA Galaxy), Doyle (Wolves). Subs: McGeady (Spartak Moscow) for Hunt (59 mins), Cox (West Brom) for Keane (68 mins), Fahey (Birmingham) for Duff (79 mins).

ESTONIA:Londak (Bobo Glimt); Jaager (Aalesunds), Rahn (Tianjin Songjiang), Klavan (AZ Alkmaar), Kruglov (Rostov); Teniste (Sogndal), Vassiljev (Amkar Perm), Vunk (Famagusta), Lindpere (New York Red Bulls); Saag (Silkborg), Voskoboinikov (Himki). Subs: Puri (Lombard-Papa) for Kruglov (18 mins), Kink (Middlesbrough) for Lindpere (54 mins), Purje (Ethnikos Achna) for Voskoboinikov(73 mins).

Referee:Bjorn Kuipers (Netherlands).