I don’t give a flying fcuk who wins. It’s not because we lost to Eire that we didn’t qualify, it’s because we drew with Georgia and Serbia at home after being in front, drew with Austria away after being in front twice, and drew with Serbia away after being ahead. The two home games in particular were hard to take.
For the record, I like white pudding and Guinness but do hate this “aren’t the Irish such wonderful people” habit the world seems to have got into. They’re no different to any other small nation (except they have about 20 million people entitled to a passport who live outside their country).