World Cup Play-off November 17th 1997 - Ireland v Belgium: It was a night of sporting passion that made the nerves jingle, as Mick McCarthy's men did themselves proud in defeat, writes Tom Humphries

SATURDAY NIGHT in Brussels. We will speak about it for a very long time. When we have finished the debate about the throw-in, the penalty, the offside and the dismissal, we will still remember the occasion.

This was an opera. This was an earthquake. This was a flood. A great tidal sort of night which shifted us all along with its own momentum. We lost, but in every other sense we were uplifted. We lost with honour on a great sporting night.

Little people will start picking at the sores immediately. Should have done this, should have done that. Loser!

As if for a small nation with no domestic league soccer success could ever be unremitting and inevitable. There were tears on Saturday night and some angry words, but there was pride and hope too.

Signs that this transitional Irish team is finding its way at last.

Every Belgian fan found a little red flag on his or her seat when they arrived. Soon the music was pumped up to full volume and the stadium was alive with Belgian voices and a herky-jerky sea of red flags. From the Irish end came the hoarse strains of The Fields of Athenry. There was smoke and flares and the prospect of 90 minutes of winner-takes-all football.

And there was rain.

Ireland lost but came of age. Before the game the players wrapped arms around each other and closed in on their own circle where they roared words of encouragement to each other. It set the tone. By the last 10 or 15 minutes of the game the crazy ferment in the stands had subsided. The Belgians, robbed of their easy rhythm and jaunty confidence were scared. Everything in the air suggested that there was one more Irish goal in the game somewhere. Not to be.

This was a near perfect football occasion, a night when sport made the nerves tingle. In the aftermath, the Belgians, with a 2-1 win in the bank, celebrated crazily. They danced jigs and played We Are the Champions and great spraying geysers of champagne foam rose up from knots of players on the pitch.

The Irish, spattered with mud and shedding tears by the gallon, went to the end of the field occupied by their supporters. Songs were sung and scarves and flags were raised in honour. The flashbulbs popped and the noise kept rising, and through the mayhem victory and defeat went cheek by jowl.

“We won with two goals to one and for us that is good and is all that matters,” said Georges Leekens, the dapper Belgian manager, in his only post-game pronouncement in English. It came at the end of a 15-minute soliloquy in French.

“It feels bad,” said Mick McCarthy succinctly. “We thought we were the better team tonight!”

Everyone wore the result on their faces. Next summer, the World Cup finals will divide the football world. Those there. Those not there. Managers and players had just emerged from a great rollicking adventure of a match. Belgian technique and patience matched against Irish passion play.

“It was tough out there,” said Tony Cascarino, who battered his way through 90 minutes of top-class football for possibly the last time.

“Just wasn’t to be,” said Andy Townsend, who in all likelihood ended his Irish career on the same night as his childhood friend Cascarino.

The Irish evacuated Brussels quickly, travelling under police escort back to their hotel where they ate hurriedly, packed their bags and headed for the airport.

They arrived into Dublin in the dead of night with only a handful of people there to greet them. Yet there was a thread of hope running through the whole adventure. As McCarthy said on Saturday night, when the next batch of young players come through they join a group barely senior to them, who each have the guts of 20 international caps hanging on their mantelpiece.

It is conceivable indeed that with a little luck McCarthy might have a squad with some depth at his disposal in the foreseeable future. Gary Kelly, Gary Breen, Ian Harte, Jason McAteer, Phil Babb, Gareth Farrelly, Kenny Cunningham, David Connolly, Keith O’Neill and Shay Given are all experienced internationals and each have the ability to play well into the next century.

There is much comfort in that.

And, digging further, there are good things too. Managers and football people not much given to gushing mindlessly have gone out of their way to describe the extraordinary talents of players like Damien Duff, Robbie Keane, Richard Dunne and Stephen McPhail, each of whom is still eligible for Ireland’s youth team.

There are other happy auguries. Niall Quinn’s goal for Sunderland on Saturday might mark the end of this miserable, injury-pocked passage of his career. Roy Keane restored to full fitness can yet enjoy seven or eight years of international football. Stephen Staunton, possessor of 73 caps already, is only 27.

Saturday night in Brussels was a bad night but footballing heartbreak comes in worse guises. In a stadium where the fever pitch was almost incomparable, Ireland performed. They came away with hope still alive.

We lost on Saturday night. In circumstances alive with pride in what used to be the Heysel Stadium. There could have been no better venue for reminding us of the proper perspective in which to place football. The future can’t come soon enough.