What a difference a year makes

For the Irish football fan, this time last year was full of dreams, songs to sing and camper vans to source.

Twelve months on, by contrast, the prevailing mood is one of pained regret tinged with a deep foreboding.

Yes, I know we don’t like to mention the war but I’m afraid there’s no getting away from the fact that 2012 was the year when one of the chestnut terrace chants of yesteryear finally and definitively passed its sell-by date, the spirited defiance of ‘You’ll never beat the Irish’ turned on its head to become a parody of itself.