We watched Saturday's game in a clip-joint on the near north side of Chicago. The surrender of $20 granted you the right to stand in front of a small TV, clutching a pricey beer. There to watch the game of your choice without benefit of commentary. Irish emigrants haven't known such misery and hardship since the Famine.

All around the bar other congregations were at worship. The English and Kiwi rugby fundamentalists were finishing up at vespers. The college gridiron faithful were being catered to with separate services on six different screens. Downstairs the Yugoslavs and the Croatians were peacefully shoehorned into the basement. We reflected on the eternal mysteries of the Balkans - Serbs and Croats happily watching a match together as the Macedonians tore into us looking to achieve a result that would ultimately usher Yugoslavia into the finals. Would we do the same for England? We would not.

Niall Quinn's goal with jam on it brought on some cheering but no careless spillage of drinks. Then 75 minutes of glum, mediocre football, followed by the acceptance of a sucker punch delivered by registered mail. It finished and we turned away and cursed. Bah! Got what we deserved.

Second place. You could make an argument that it is sufficient achievement for a nation still in footballing transition, you could point out that the fragmentation of Europe has meant that finishing second is no longer enough to get us under the wire and into international tournaments as it was in the Charlton era. Even global geopolitics conspire against us, see.

The pony won't run. We got the breaks and we blew it down the straight. Only a fool goes searching for luck in international football and at the end of the day, when the UEFA scorekeeper audits the dry statistics, it doesn't really matter if the Republic of Ireland gave away a free header from a corner in the first minute of the game or the third minute of injury-time.

When you get into the 93rd minute of a game the sentence for ugly-as-mortal-sin defensive errors is heavy and doesn't allow for appeal. Given our recent history we couldn't claim ignorance of that particular law as an excuse.

We have to take what's coming to us. We beat one country whose campaign was interrupted by war, hoodwinked another on the rebound from the World Cup, and turned in some competent performances between times. For our mix of good and bad, second place is fitting reward/punishment.

As it should be. No room for bleeding-heart fans with typewriters. On Saturday we played badly and we haven't played well since the Yugoslavia game. We have yet to devise a way of covering over the Grand Canyon-sized crack which appears in the team when Roy Keane is unavailable. Against uninspired opposition like Saturday evenings that is hard to excuse.

There was some sympathy for Mick McCarthy, of course. He put out the best team available, knowing deep down that a centre half of his own stature would have made the difference. And in the end Macedonia swung a baseball bat to his gut for the second time in 16 months.

It's not easy to have the invitation to the big party snatched away just as you sneak past the big bouncers, but in the cold light of morning our failure to beat a weakened Macedonia team deserved little better.

Most galling is the obvious nature of the deficiency. It isn't the god of small things who has let us down, it is the Madonna of the Bleeding Obvious who has deserted us. With Roy Keane the team is Sampson. Without him they look like 11 Delilahs.

The centre of defence, a rickety makeshift thing at the best of times, is left cruelly exposed in his absence. As a result the history of the current campaign makes for strange reading. We have come through a stern qualifying group doing the difficult things well. We beat Croatia and Yugoslavia (both superior sides to ourselves) at home and lost by just a single goal to each of them away from home. Yet, cartoonish errors in Zagreb and Skopje have cost us three points and the main chance.

On Saturday the shot that led to the Macedonian corner, which in turn led to the goal, was one of those indulgences which Sheriff Roy Keane would never have granted in his town. Worse was the creeping inevitability of it, Alan Kelly being forced into a couple of extraordinary saves, the sense that he couldn't keep pulling it of.

After the first disaster in Skopje 16 months ago people around the team privately identified one of the major problems as the gulf in leadership left when the big men of the Charlton era shuffled off.

From the sidelines that first day in Skopje several things became clear. Players weren't looking after each other, they weren't monitoring each other and geeing each other up. As things turned bad you couldn't hear an Irish players voice raised anywhere. They were just 11 guys in jerseys tending to their own patch.

Jack Charlton has always been identified as a lucky general. Other results always went right for him, the best cards always came up, but perhaps where he enjoyed the most good fortune was in the character of his personnel. From Bonner through Moran and McCarthy and Houghton and Townsend, he was blessed with self-motivated football men who could read and lead a game.

Sixteen months after the first silent acquiescence in Skopje things have improved slightly. The team has a less callow look about it. By now they owe themselves a good day.

I'm strangely optimistic about the play-offs, regardless of who we draw on Wednesday. It's about character now and the extent to which experience has galvanised Mick McCarthy's team. There comes a time when a group has to draw a line under its own history and start afresh. Lots of these guys must be ready for that. Hard luck stories from Bucharest, Brussels, Belgrade, Zagreb and Skopje are a scant return for three years of promise and effort.

There comes a time when there are no choices left, but to assert yourself, to shake up your own destiny until it gives you the answers you want. November is that time.

A team with both Keanes in it, a team with Gary Kelly, Denis Irwin, Steve Staunton, Niall Quinn and Kenny Cunningham should have enough skill and character by now to turn things around. We still have almost half a team's worth of players who have been to a World Cup. The average number of caps on the team is such now that we no longer look callow.

We've been to this particular brink before and failed narrowly. It's time to make the great leap forward.