A sobering night
But, at about 3.30pm, there was a buzz around the assembling press. Sara Carbonero, the journalist who Iker Casillas famously planted a kiss on after the 2010 World Cup victory – she was, after all, his girlfriend – strolled into the Gdansk media centre.
There was, needless to say, much excitement.
Immediately, a host of journalists who would never dream of doing something so unprofessional with an actual player, were running up to her begging for a photo.
Some of us – ahem – weren’t so shameless. But were a bit more shameful.
One journalist very close to these pages – but who we of course would never name – didn’t quite have the bottle to go up to her but did want the ‘memento’ so, pretending to “check” his iPhone, he surreptitiously took a photo to throw up on Facebook.
One comment said it all.
“Was that taken with a telephoto lens? Yep, thought so.”
The quote comes from an Alan Partridge episode in which he deals with a stalker. Again, ahem.
So, is that worse than just asking for a photo?
Well, it still couldn’t have been worse than the rest of the evening.
In every sense, it was a sobering night.
When it comes to live match reports, the dream situation for most journalists is that the result is beyond doubt after about 60 minutes so they’re not under pressure and can file with a great deal more pleasure.
Last night, the result was beyond doubt after four minutes. And I can safely say no-one took pleasure in that.
The most sobering aspect of it all was that Ireland have never, really, experienced a tournament like this, where we’ve been the whipping boys. We’ve always been in contention. Last night, we knew how it felt to be Honduras 2010 or Austria 2008.
Those of us there, though, didn’t know how it felt to be listening to Roy Keane. This is the curious thing about covering a tournament. Although you’re, theoretically, at the heart of it, you often miss a lot of the themes that dominate it.
So, as many journalists sat in the press conference room, waiting and then listening to those actually involved in the match explain it, many were avidly reading twitter for updates of Keane’s rant or what the lads on RTE were saying.
Again, they made for sobering listening. As we say, the highlight of the evening came all too early.
