Last year, when I met Bill O’Herlihy for the first and only time just days before his last broadcast anchoring the RTÉ football panel, he made one of those characteristic self-depreciating comments as we were finishing up.

AND so it ends. All those nights of shredding fingernails with hearts in our mouths, those nights when our hearts were warmed and broken; in all likelihood, they ended last night as Sonia O’Sullivan finished the 5,000m final in Athens.