No injury worries as soccer saga hits the target

BOHEMIAN Rhapsody was a flamboyant piece to begin with but give it to a character called Macartacus pining “I’m a poor manager, nobody loves me” to competing choruses of “Let him go”, “No, no, do not let him go,” and not even Freddie Mercury in a space shuttle could go further over the top.

The trauma that swept Ireland in the wake of Saipan during World Cup 2002 was such that it has been a more forbidding no-go area than the road between the airport and the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Attempt serious analysis and divide the nation. Try stock humour and prepare for a painful death. There was only one way to tackle it with sheer preposterousness.