Unbearable lightness of being uneasy

Not known as someone with the intuition of a clairvoyant - still waiting to win the Lotto etc etc - the feeling of foreboding was all a bit eerie. And the hunch was accentuated in RTE's build-up to the big match when a number of Turkish players were interviewed in their swanky hotel. Too confident. Far too confident. Hadn't they heard of the Lansdowne roar? Didn't they know that the Celtic tigers bite on their home turf? What about the cross-city traffic?

It all merely served to increase the sense of unease.

Bill O'Herlihy must have felt the same way. The news that Niall Quinn was dramatically out of the Irish team left the anchorman just a mite shocked. "Sensational news," Bill almost roared at us through the TV screen and, in truth, it was left to Eamon Dunphy to tell it as it was.

"Very bad," insisted Dunphy when he heard that Tony Cascarino would replace the Mighty Quinn. His co-panelists, Jim Beglin and Joe Kinnear, didn't share the automatic doom and could see some sense in the straight swap of one big man for another. "Cascarino will put himself about," insisted Beglin, and Kinnear concurred that his "aerial" presence would hamper the Turks.

Dunphy was having none of it. "I'll bet Tony Cascarino will be off that pitch after 45 minutes," opined Dunphy. Beglin took to emphasising Cas's strong points. Dunphy seemed to let it go in one ear and out the other. "He might die, he's 38," responded Eamon, and everyone went quiet all of a sudden and those of us at home who have reached that milestone simply reaffirmed to ourselves that the old boots would stay locked in the garden shed.

No surprise, so, when Dunphy made sure his head ruled his heart when it came to making a forecast. "I don't think they'll win," said Dunphy. Despite Quinn's absence, the two Js were more confident. "I think we will win," said Jim, and Joe agreed. But when the time came for commentators George Hamilton and John Giles to take over, whatever feel-good factor had been delivered by a two to one vote of confidence was swiftly wiped away and the third J was sounding a note of caution.

"What do you think?" enquired George, and Giles was as honest as usual. "It's a blow, no doubt about it," said Giles of Quinn's sudden defection. "Tony Cascarino is a good servant, but there is a limit to what he can do."

Twenty three seconds into the match, the Lansdowne crowd - and the TV viewers - got their first glimpse of the Turkish goalkeeper Rustu. By half-time, Giles was conceding, "this guy is very, very good," as he jumped with all the agility of a cat and ensured that the Turks could use up nine lives too.

The mood in the RTE studio hardly suggested there was a party taking place, but at least Eamon and Jim were talking to each other and Joe had stopped playing referee. "We're going backwards," insisted Eamon. "The Turks have gone into the dressing-room at halftime all square with a home match to come and they'll be feeling better than we are."

Over in the BBC studios in Hampden Park, where Gary Lineker, Martin O'Neill and Alan Hansen had stayed behind after the Scotland match in the darkness, the mood was a touch more upbeat. "The Irish are doing well," claimed Hansen, and O'Neill ranted on with a passion that you just wished you could bottle it and fly across the Irish Sea in time for the second half so that the Ireland players could use it.

But how to beat Rustu. "He's not one of your dodgy foreigners, is he?" asked Lineker of Hansen and he simply nodded as if he couldn't understand it at all at all.

Very few Irish people had ever heard of Rustu before the match. As the second half progressed, everyone knew his name. He was the hero to the Turks, the villain to the Irish in the stadium who thought that jeers and whistles would dent his armour. Wait for Bursa!

Not only content with saving shots, he keeled over when involved in a shoulder-to-shoulder tackle with Robbie Keane. "That's nonsense, play-acting," insisted Giles as the goalkeeper lay on the ground and looked as if he'd never get up again. Of course he did resurface, and continued to torment the Irish until Robbie Keane's goal arrived out of the blue.

"They can probably hear the roar from here to Tipperary," shouted Jon Champion over on BBC 2 and co-commentator Mark Lawrenson praised the composure of the young duo of Keane and David Connolly before bringing the sort of pragmatism that was needed out on the pitch. "Now it's time to shut up shop," said Lawrenson, and suddenly you remembered Croatia and Macedonia.

Three minutes later, you could almost hear Lawro groaning as Lee Carsley handled the ball. "Purely intuitive," said Lawrenson, "but there is no doubt at all about it. No argument whatsoever." And you wondered why they couldn't have listened to him and simply pulled down the shutters. Lawrenson himself gave the answer. "They don't have enough people with the strength of mind," he said.

Gloomy faces all round in the RTE studio afterwards. "Disaster?" asked Bill. "It's only a game of football," responded Eamon, reminding everyone that the earthquake in Turkey was a disaster. "We got what we deserved," added Eamon, returning to his pre-match opinion that playing Cascarino was "a joke".

The fire alarm was blaring by the time the cameras switched to Darragh Maloney's post-match interview with Mick McCarthy. One wondered who would come to the rescue, and a video replay of Carsley's hand-ball brought a wry acceptance from the Irish manager. "I think the referee's got it right by the look of things," agreed McCarthy.

Upstairs in the RTE studio, Jim Beglin was talking of "a nightmare," Robbie Keane's yellow card combining with Niall Quinn's injury to make you wonder where an Irish goal in Turkey would come from. "Don't forget he dropped Robbie Keane for the game in Croatia," recalled Dunphy, again the provider of little nuggets.

Whether or not Irish viewers will get to see the rematch in Bursa on Wednesday depends on a number of factors, mainly money. The Turkish broadcasters are looking for $2 million - "a ransom," said O'Herlihy - and the Irish stations aren't coughing up that amount. Stand-off time.

Earlier in the day, Sky brought all their pomp and ceremony to the so-called "Battle of Britain" in the other Euro 2000 play-off match. Half and hour before kick-off, Ray Wilkins, Graeme Souness and Andy Gray looked proper plonkers as they tried to predict what would happen by using something that looked like a draughtboard but resembled a football pitch and used chips as players. Pretty sad, really.

Gray was more at home with his in-your-face style of commentating once the match got underway, but the battle had as much passion as a dress rehearsal.

"Scotland's defending is absolutely woeful . . . scandalously bad defending from Scotland," said Gray after Scholes' first goal. "The first long ball England knocked into anybody," remarked studio guest Jack Charlton at half-time when talking of the goal, and old memories of Ireland's route one flooded back. It almost sounded as if his way was right after all.