Don’t bottle that hunch, Eamo

EAMON DUNPHY hadn’t a dream: he just had a hunch.

Estonia, he assured us, had good players. We hadn’t noticed too many Platinis or Ronaldos in their number, but, oh yes, of course. Yes, of course.

“I think they can make life extremely difficult for us tonight,” he ruled, “unless they bottle it.”

Fair point. It was hard to see them make life difficult for us if they did happen to bottle it: not quite the boxer’s excuse that “I was doing grand entirely until he hit me”, but scarcely the most strident declaration of Estonia’s quality either.

And he acknowledged they were missing some key players. But he still had a hunch.

Alas, for pundits, hunches are tricky little buggers.

You find yourself relaying your hunch – and yet your language betrays you. “It would be shocking to be beaten by them,” he said, seemingly oblivious to the contradiction.

Back in Chateau Hunch, he reminded us that this team, this team that would be “shocking” to lose to, were “not as bad as people think, they’re a useful side.”

He stuck to his hunch as long as he could (half-time, now that you’ve asked, when he told us there was “a potency” about Estonia.)

Anyway, we all know that in the area of making “life extremely difficult for us”, we have long been self-sufficient in every way. We have a big pylon up the hill out the back, and we even have some excess to feed into the national grid. Maybe that’s the real reason why Eamon had a hunch.

Daragh Maloney dragged us firmly into Danger Here territory right on the half-time whistle. We almost detected a note of impatience in his remark that Ireland might “perhaps finish this thing before it gets back to Dublin.”

It was all of one-nil at the time, in case you’ve forgotten.

Maybe if we got two or three the referee would blow it up early, like in one of those under-age mis-matches of your youth where the coach (the losing coach) asks for his team to be put of their misery.

The studio was in that neither-here-nor-there mood that has characterised their demeanour throughout most of GT’s reign. I have one of those tricky little hunches they are underwhelmed by the whole thing. Brady and Giles thought we could do it handy enough in the second-half, what with Estonia down to ten men, but they weren’t sure we would.

“We have a great opportunity to finish this tie here but I’m not confident we are going to be able to do it,” said Brady. Giles said the space created by the sending-off was “made for midfield players”, but never exhibited any sense of excitement about the prospect.

They eventually focused on what was, er, undoubtedly the biggest talking-point of the first-half: the exact quality of the cross by Aidan McGeedy’s, that led directly to Ireland’s first goal.

“It was a good cross,” said Brady, “it wasn’t a great cross. As Eamon would say, it was alright.”

By the 70th minute, Daragh had his wish. There would be no hassle Tuesday night. Robbie Keane read the keeper’s parry and slotted the third.

The ‘thing’ was finished off. “A fourth goal and Estonia can cancel the flight to Dublin and not turn up next week,” noted Daragh in the 85th minute, who can expect an angry call from tourism supremo Michael Ring.

A minute – and another yellow card – later the prospect of tiny Estonia not having enough players for Tuesday night reared its head. Keane stuck it. Estonia looked dishevelled: to keep the thing alive Ring, a former Westport United player (the club of another man in the news Peter Collins), might even have to play for Estonia.

Position? Wide on the right, of course.

On 90 minutes and 34 seconds, Daragh recorded the first official mention of the official funder to the fans, the Credit Union, if they still have a bob left (our words, not his).

And with those words (his, not ours) he made your hunch official: we’re off to Euro 2012.