Without doubt, this World Cup play-off is one that got away for Ireland

The biggest show on earth remains half the world away for the Boys in Green after Ireland's heartbreaking defeat in Prague.

DOWN AND OUT: Ireland’s Finn Azaz dejected after losing to the penalty shootout. Pic: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

And to think there was a time when the FAI was blasé enough to refuse invites to World Cups. It felt this last while as if the Republic of Ireland would have to take on half the world just to make it to North America. Well, half of Europe anyway.

Portugal and Ronaldo, the cod, sorted. Hungary beaten in Budapest. Two-nil up on the Czechs through the first quarter of this playoff semi-final and that last hurdle, in Dublin next Tuesday night, felt like it was within touching distance.

All that momentum from November had carried across the winter and past the New Year. All that turmoil in the Czech team and in wider Czech football seemed to be creating the perfect storm. Would it be the Danes or the North Macedonians next week?

The Danes did their job, Ireland couldn’t finish theirs.

A game that they had in their grip was allowed to slip through their fingers and, if elimination through the lottery of a penalty shootout stands as the last word, then Heimir Hallgrimsson and his side will harbour regrets from earlier in the night.

The last four months still feel like the start of something for a national side that had lost its way and its connection with the fan base, but this marks the end of a long road for now. The World Cup will take its course without the Irish. Again.

The enormity of that will sting. So will the manner of it. They were so close.

The visitors were much the better team here for so long, but they fell deeper and deeper in the second-half as they defended a 2-1 lead. The concession of the late near-post header to Ladislav Krecji will kill them. So will the soft nature of the free that led to the cross.

All that giddiness, gone.

One of Europe’s stag party capitals, Prague appeared to be caught unawares by the invasion of these strange island folk from the continent’s wind- and rainswept western edge who looked determined to drain dry the stocks of the locals’ famed Staropramen.

One wedding couple found themselves posing for photos against a backdrop of men in parrot masks. A local band played away on a bandstand to a cacophony of boozy applause. A refuse truck got a close-up of the next day’s work as it snaked through the crowd.

This mania takes many forms.

There were plenty of people wearing green and singing songs in Prague’s Old Town Square on Thursday for whom the actual game was nothing much more than a hook for a good time. A licence to party. And good luck to them.

The other extreme was the cast numbering thousands who had in recent days scoured YouTube footage for Harvey Vale, a young footballer with QPR with a name plucked straight out of a Fredrick Forsyth novel.

Would it be Jack Taylor or Jason Knight or Bosun Lawal in the midfield with Jayson Molumby? Would Ryan Manning see off the returning Robbie Brady? And what exactly was the story with Tomas Soucek?

These are questions precisely nobody saw exercising our minds back in September. It took Troy Parrott’s toenail to change all that, and to rewire our brains for the frankly giddy possibility of actually making the World Cup.

The locals looked less bothered.

Stories of internal conflict, in the team after a dreadful qualifying campaign, and in the game at large thanks to an untimely tale of match-fixing allegations, had haunted the Czechs in the run-in to this playoff semi-final.

A Tipsport extraliga ice hockey game between Pilsen and Sparta filled the hours prior to kick-off at the Fortuna Arena. Karolina Muchova’s game against Coco Gauff in the Miami Open was top story in a local sports website.

The 19,370-capacity home of Slavia Prague’s football team wasn’t near full for this, despite the smattering of Irish fans having infiltrated the home sections. Even the Czech national anthem sounded like a lament.

The notion that Ireland had done kinda alright in this playoff draw, certainly in terms of first-up opponent, had sprouted pretty quickly from suspicion to accepted wisdom. None of it was infected by the first quarter.

Tomas Choury was getting his lanky frame to a few long balls in front of the Irish centre-backs, and Seamus Coleman and Chiedozie Ogbene were all arm gestures and shouts as they tried to work out some positioning quirks.

Other than that, it was gravy. And not any old Bisto, that fancy jus stuff.

There were fine margins. The vaguest of clips of Nathan Collins’ boot by Vladimir Darida for the Troy Parrott penalty opener. An unfortunate deflection off Matej Kovar that just about snuck over the goalkeeper’s goalline for the second.

Fractions of infinitesimal value, but they went both ways.

Collins hitting the bar. Jayson Molumby smacking one off a post. Ryan Manning making a snap decision to pull Krejci’s jersey that he must have regretted even as his fingers clasped the cotton. The Troy Parrott header turned round the post in the 80th minute.

Regrets? You hoped even then that they wouldn’t be left with a few. That was before Krecji’s header to equalise. Before extra-time and the purgatory of that shootout. One that got away. It's as simple as that.