Tommy Martin: Stephen Kenny has survived the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan

Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny and goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher following the international friendly match against Hungary at Szusza Ferenc Stadion in Budapest. Picture: Alex Nicodim/Sportsfile

The Republic of Ireland’s last game of the season felt like their first. Their first proper one, at least.

A tricky away tie in Eastern Europe in front of a hostile crowd. Chances at either end. Heart-in-mouth moments. Could have snatched it. A draw a fair result.

You could almost hear Jimmy Magee down a crackling phone line.

Proper international football. It was the crowd, but it wasn’t just the crowd. Ireland played in front of 8,000 in Helsinki on Nations League duty back in October, but that didn’t feel like proper international football. That was in the thick of it: what they call, in American war movies, ‘the shit’. Guys dropping with Covid left, right and centre. People measuring the millimetres between plane seats. Backroom staff throwing wobblies.

It wasn’t supposed to be proper international football on Tuesday night, mind you. We were patsies, sent to Budapest as morale-boosting fodder for the home team before the Euros. We were the punch-drunk journeyman there for the champ to beat up on. Who will we get? That crowd that lost to Luxembourg? Perfect.

It put you in mind of Ireland’s game against Belarus in Turner’s Cross before Euro 2016, at the height of Martin and Roy. That’s it, Belarus. We were Belarus. Belarus won that night, by the way, but no one remembers that. Good times.

Maybe it felt like proper international football because Ireland are starting to resemble a proper international team. At last, the lofty aspirations of the Stephen Kenny era blended with canny pragmatism. The performance was characterised as much by the forbidding torso of Shane Duffy as the occasional nice, passing triangle; the result earned in equal measure by the goalkeeping heroics of Gavin Bazunu and Caoimhin Kelleher as fluid, tactical niceties.

Setting their stall out early on, the Irish defence lined up for goal-kicks in modern first positions — that is to say, centre-halves either side of the goalkeeper, in the style of ‘The Jam’ appearing on ‘Top of the Pops’. Opposition pressers soon lurked like hungry cats at an open hamster cage. But rather than go full Arsenal and lurch into catastrophe, Ireland pinged the ball direct, Bazunu’s gunboot causing a Magyar rethink.

Later on in the first half, Ireland’s 3-4-3 formation began to sag into a dumpy 5-2-3. With wing-backs Matt Doherty and James McClean retreating fearfully and wide forwards Troy Parrott and Jason Knight too narrow, Hungary found roomy pockets on the flanks from which to launch service to Adam Szalai, a bearlike striker greedy for plunder.

Thankfully, good coaching intervened. At half-time McClean and Doherty were instructed to step forward, Knight began to plug gaps in midfield and the home team were shooed away to less threatening terrain. Nothing airy or philosophical, just a minor tactical tweak that made all the difference. The stuff of proper international football.

It even seemed like Kenny’s Guinness Book of Records run of bad luck might be at an end. Late on, Szalai sensed blood as Ireland cowered, certain that something was about to go wrong — it usually does. Stomping around the Irish defence like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo, Szalai rained down missiles on Kelleher. Meanwhile, when a trademark blootered clearance was required, Duffy skited an attempted short pass into certain danger.

But, after a year of mishaps, defensive calamities and simple twists of fate, the bad thing didn’t happen. The good thing didn’t happen either, but Ireland left Budapest with that metaphorical point in the bag and you could almost imagine the late Jimmy putting down the bakelite receiver and heaving a sigh of relief.

Hang on. Is that it, after a year of the Stephen Kenny revolution? After all the heartache and heated debates, the culture wars, the dreams of great, glittering passing palaces in the sky? Here we are, back among the landfill of mid-ranking European nations, the ones who take turns to make up the numbers at bloated major tournaments. Chances at either end. Could have snatched it. Draw was a fair result.

Back from whence we came.

Was it all a waste of time, all those not-really-proper international football matches and all that misadventure and acrimony? Did we accomplish anything other than missing out on the Euros and messing up the World Cup? To lose out on one tournament may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both etc., etc…

Tempting as it is to consign much of the last season to the dumpster of historical record, it has to mean something, that barely believable, what-fresh-hell-is-this inventory of negativity. In effect, Kenny has, in international management terms, been through the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. He has taken heavy fire, there have been casualties aplenty but he has survived and there is now the chance to take a breath under a Normandy hedgerow.

If there was one image that resonates from Tuesday night, more than any tactical snapshot, it was that of the Ireland team taking the knee before kick-off. The contrast with their Hungarian opponents and the jeers of the Budapest crowd placed the Irish team at the centre of the great swirling confrontation of our times.

All of which seems tangential to the question of whether Ireland are any good or not. But that image at least shows that this is a team that stands for something. It has an identity, a solidarity, the kind of team an African-born winger called Chiedozie Ogbene can come on and gambol up and down the field for and feel a part of.

Where young players like Idah, Parrott and Knight can sometimes learn the hard way but still feel trusted, minded. If you can nail down those principles then styles of play and tactics follow from there.

Too often in recent months Kenny’s latest mishaps have felt like the beginning of the end.

Instead, with a proper international performance under his belt, it might be just the end of the beginning.