Michael Duignan’s plea could have served as an entreaty for all manner of frustrated parties.

A few weeks ago, we wondered again why giving out about Gaelic football remains one of the country’s few sustainable growth areas.

This afternoon we line up at the Aviva Stadium against one of the few European nations we have never faced before.

JT: Comfortable in his own skin whatever anyone else thinks

Deepak Chopra — still waiting for his Premier League chance — calls it past conditioning. “A new experience enters the mind, but instead of being evaluated for itself, is shunted down a well-worn track.”

Flushed by cup fever last weekend — or perhaps slightly nauseous watching JT and Lamps plot their tag-team silverware hoist — I indulged heavily in ESPN’s gluttonous reprise of cup finals past.

Every sport encounters, at some point, a low watermark of behaviour — in or out of the playing arena — that ensures things will never be quite the same again.

The blue moon has turned to gold all right, but at what cost?

Through his myriad media engagements this week, it was remarkable to watch Roy Keane pick the scabs off 10-year-old wounds with an energy that suggested very little healing has really been done.

On the face of it, swapping Capello for Hodgson and telling the latter to wing it after a few weeks’ preparation might not seem the smartest route to Euro glory.