Perhaps now, it’s best to move beyond the perennial straw-clutching

Maybe it’s better this way.

How many times have Ireland been tortured by the pernicious illusion of hope for far too long? How many times has the national side done just enough to allow dreams overshadow logic, only for those tables to be turned at a campaign’s bitter end?

Even the last inglorious failure — when the side finished fourth behind Germany, Sweden and Austria in the race to make the 2014 World Cup in Brazil — didn’t dawn until the summer had long passed and the Swedes turned Ireland over 2-1 in Dublin in September.

Now, at least, a clear picture has emerged even earlier. Surely now, with the grand illusion of Euro 2012 — remember all that talk of ‘doing a Denmark’? — far enough back in the rearview mirror, we can see through the pea-soup fog of self-delusion.

The far from mighty footballing powers of Wales, Slovakia and Iceland lead their respective groups. Northern Ireland and, to a lesser extent, Scotland are flourishing in theirs. The Republic, on the other hand, are stuck in reverse and picking up speed.

Perhaps now then the nation can take the time it needs to sit back, to take a deep breath and honestly analyse where it is we stand in the greater scheme of things. To acknowledge once and for all that what we do just doesn’t work, and to look for answers.

Let’s be honest, like. What do we have but a national team that can’t cut it, a national league that continues to trudge through a mire of mediocrity and disinterest and an association headed by a man who has become a lightning rod for controversy and ire?

All of this surely goes beyond what we saw on Saturday night. Questions are required that are more fundamental and complex than those about whether Shane Long should have started up front in the Aviva or whether Wes Hoolahan should have been taken off.

Of course, it won’t happen. Never has, never will. Come September, our heads will have been turned by the intoxication of the All-Ireland finals and the faint but not fanciful chance that Joe Schmidt’s Ireland might give itself a shot of making a Rugby World Cup final.

As for their football counterparts, the fact is that, in Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane, Ireland possess a management set-up that was almost universally welcomed and, though the desired results haven’t followed, there have been few stones left unturned.

Robbie Keane has been started and left out, the celebrated Hoolahan has been finally handed something approximating a major role in the production and even James McCarthy flirted around an opponent’s penalty area with intent two days ago.

Boil it all down and O’Neill has still lost just one of his six competitive fixtures in charge, but the draw has become a dagger in the heart of the Irish supporter — the 1-1 being an especially grievous blade — and there is no cause celebre waiting for the call anymore.

There is no Hoolahan or Andy Reid waiting for the belated nod to don the white, shining armour and ride to the rescue. There is no managerial alchemist either: no Gordon Strachan or Michael O’Neill being championed as the peoples’ choice.

Heaven knows Ireland have looked for one: Brian Kerr was the homegrown champion, Steve Staunton the beloved ex-player, Giovanni Trapattoni the decorated continental and now O’Neill who offered the combination of Irish blood and English Premier League nous.

And it isn’t even as if luck has deserted Martin O’Neill’s Republic. Three late, late goals handed the side a buoyant start to this campaign and fortune smiled on them again against the Scots when Jon Walters’ offside effort was allowed to stand.

Bottom line: there are no ‘ifs’, no surfeit of ‘buts’.

And yet the torture will go on. There will be no root and branch rethink, not while hope hovers even an inch closer to slim than none. Listening to O’Neill and his players speak after Saturday’s depressing draw made it clear that little will change in the short term.

“Obviously it’s difficult now to get to France, but in terms of our next two games: maximum points and we see then,” said John O’Shea. “That takes us to 15 with two games to go. So, we’ll know then what we have to do against Poland and Germany.” By then, the hope — that accursed word again — is that Scotland will have slipped up away to Georgia. A Georgia side that, a win against Gibraltar aside, has failed to pick up a single point.

Yes, it really has come to that.