Alan Good
The cameras had stopped flashing, the scribblers had left the building and RTÉ were wondering where the next minority sport bandwagon to follow was going to come from.
Come 8.30pm on Sunday night, a darkened National Hockey Stadium in Belfield was even quieter than it had been when Korea stunned the home crowd by hitting the winner in the Electric Ireland FIH Road to London final mere seconds from time,
It dashed Ireland's dreams of qualifying for an Olympics for the first time in over 100 years in the cruellest fashion. The majority will have moved on by Monday morning but the mental dynamics are different for the members of the squad.
On one hand, this was the bitterest pill of their sporting careers, and the cloud of disappointment will take some time to lift yet. Conversely, the sun did come up yesterday and there is plenty for this outfit to be excited about.
For a start, of the 18 that competed last week, only skipper Ronan Gormley and drag-flickers John Jermyn and Timmy Cockram are the wrong side of 27. As a professional player in Spain, Gormley is unlikely to be going anywhere but for Jermyn and Cockram, both solicitors by day, the temptation to step away from the international stage after a decade or so of commitment must be there.
Whatever the trio decide, Ireland have the resources to cope. Paul Revington has pointedly developed a 40-man panel and hasn't been afraid to bring in teenage talent such as Cookstown's Ian Sloan and UCD's Shane O'Donoghue. Squad and coach use the watchwords of performance and process, and a hallmark of this generation is their maturity and composure in tight games.
Previously, the nation's hockey team have mirrored a stereotypical Irish sporting team of times gone by in terms of inconsistency - occasionally picking off a giant-killing feat, but prone to cracking up against weaker opposition.
Revington's legacy to this Irish side thus far has been to eradicate that; poorer teams are usually swatted aside and world number 16 Ireland have regularly beaten side ranked well above them. This was in evidence again in Belfield over the course of the nine-day tournament, only for that late Korean sucker punch to leave them in unwanted moral victory territory.
There are things to work on - discipline, short corner conversion and dealing with pacy, quick-breaking forwards among them - and Rio 2016 seems a long way away now. But the side have plenty of goals to focus on in the interim - moving up a level in the Champions Challenge, European championships and World Cup qualifiers are all on the agenda in the next two years.
And what of the hordes that supported them throughout the last fortnight or so? Hockey didn't know itself as Belfield put up the sold-out signs for the first time for a hockey international last Tuesday - then did so again three times in the next five days.
Two national broadcasters turned up for Sunday's decider. Dozens of radio stations took an interest, thousands worldwide watched on a live stream, President Michael D Higgins had a gander, and well-known sporting figures tweeted good luck messages. The Irish Hockey Association gained over 100 new followers in a matter of minutes after Tommy Bowe - whose sister Hannah is a women's international - hit the retweet button.
Furthermore, the tearful end garnered huge images and reams of column inches in national newspapers. Friends and colleagues who wouldn't know a hockey stick from a hurley texted their condolences.
That it didn't have a happy ending ultimately means Irish hockey will likely still be reaching for the level of impact and integration in a nation's sporting consciousness that cricket has eked out for itself since 2007. Those involved can only hope the sport isn't remembered as a nice distraction for a couple of days when the Irish horses at Cheltenham and the Irish rugby team weren't doing the business.
But men's hockey has just a few thousand active players here, and will warmly welcome anyone who turns up at a club wishing to learn how to push, slap and hit. As with the team itself, there's no need to put the cart before the horse to progress.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/OPGIlDMrqS0/post.aspx
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