They haven't missed us at all. This World Cup hasn't ached for the presence of the Irish, hasn't reminisced fondly about times past. Not once after a hoofed clearance has somebody rubbed their chin and said "Ah! Row F, from which, according to the Irish, no bugger has ever scored."

Not once has there even been a hoofed clearance.

Watching the Dutch blowing like collapsed balloons down the ravine of the Avenue de Prado in Marseille the other night it was easy to see that World Cups will always pine for the Dutch, will always need the Argentinians, the Germans, the Brazilians and the Italians. The competition needs those teams in the way that Egypt should always have pyramids and Australia should always have kangaroos and England should always have Noel Edmonds. You see those things and you know where you are. For better or worse.

The rest of us the World Cup can take or leave. We ain't landmarks, we're tourists. The Scots, like ourselves hungering for affection, imagine themselves to be the centre of the footie monde, greatly loved while here and sorely lamented when gone. They are scarcely a footnote in the global imagination.

The English fret like misplaced aristocracy, lest the competition wither after their irresponsible departure. The World Cup cares not a whit for the English who have crept past the quarter-finals once in the last 32 years, like Bulgaria and Croatia.

England and Scotland. Footnotes, but at least they had the adventure.

The World Cup hasn't missed us at all, but we have missed it. There was a feeling abroad in the early part of this year - and this column, which blows about like a thinking reed, went along with it someway - that Ireland were better off not going to France, where all manner of humiliation and deprivation would await them. France wasn't safe.

Not so. We will never win the World Cup, but getting there and weaving a small corner of the big tapestry would have been worthwhile, even if we suffered a six-goal hammering somewhere along the way. When you are here you have your moments in the sun. When you are gone nobody else remembers you especially but you take something away.

You can see it in the faces of fans hustling for taxis, shuttles and metros after games. The innocent joy of having seen their own team and their own colours out there at the centre of the world for 90 minutes.

There's nothing like it, nothing like the suspension of adulthood which the World Cup allows. On the train from St Etienne to Lyon last week, after Holland and Mexico played, you could see what it meant. Two sets of fans still drunk from the excitement began a Mexican wave which ran the length of the train, carriage by carriage. It ran like a green and orange shiver along the spine of the train, up and down, up and down.

What a sight it must have been from the fields and windows outside. Someday next winter, when the commuter train in Guadalajara or Rotterdam is full, men and women who were there will find themselves smiling at the memory. Maybe one or two will quietly raise their arms above their head in a private commemorative Mexican wavelet.

It would have been fun to watch (less fun for Irish journalists to cover), Mick McCarthy's young team taking the crash course on the fields of France. This, the English and German louts not withstanding, has been a good and joyous World Cup. In quality it has certainly been the best of the last 16 years and to have been a part of it, to have minutely influenced its flavour, would have been sufficient. Mick McCarthy, in fairness, grasped that a long time ago, when he spoke about not being worried about getting spanked so long as we were there. No team comes away diminished for having gone to a World Cup.

The World Cup has given us something else apart from the realisation that we need the competition far more than it needs us. It has given us a clear view of just how long a barrel we are staring down when it comes to making the next European Championships.

The Croatians and the Yugoslavs, with whom we share a cramped little group, have the capacity to shred us into small pieces if we aren't careful. On the field it could be just as bad.

The Croatians have given Mick McCarthy perhaps more chances than he wanted to observe them before our European Championship business with them. The principal hope now must be that they will celebrate their fine summer a little too richly and catch gout in the process.

Yet in their excellence the Croatians offer us some hope. Who would have thought that a team destined for a long haul at the World Cup would have half its defence drawn from Everton and Derby County? If that doesn't give us some encouragement, nothing will.

Marginally the oldest team left in the knock-out competition (average age 27 years and six months), once they had eliminated the Germans (average age 56 but some were older and others younger), the Croatians have peaked two years after they were supposed to.

A lot of us put smart money on Croatia in Euro 96, the same type of smart money which we invested in Spain for France 98. Being smart sorts and having spotted the pattern, we are already off-loading excess cash reserves on Belgium for the European Championships in 2000.

See, any nation with a decent home team can always expect to do reasonably well in the competition, with the entire nation blowing the ball towards the opposition goals. We instance the French, who without the benefit of a World class striker have still managed to enjoy their own World Cup. They have struggled through with scarcely the aid of a National League class striker. Again we should be encouraged. The Croatians are elderly, the Brazilians have a suspect defence, the French have no forwards and the Dutch weren't quite ready. We have at least that much going for us.

The football globe keeps spinning and it will be September and game time before we know it. The break from the big time may have done us good in one small respect. It has purged our complacency.

As Damian Duff, Robbie Keane, Ian Maybury et al embark on serious international careers you can't help thinking of the intoxicating excitement of the breakthrough years. Germany 1988 and Italy 1990 when we were still fans and had yet to become critics.

A great World Cup which has fizzed and buzzed without our presence has made fans of us again. We'll take the trip next time regardless of the outlook. There is no better occasion for just being along for the ride and seizing the day.