DON'T COUNT YOUR POLLOS...

There is a strange and uneasy atmosphere abroad in the land, as the Republic prepares to take on what used to be called "the might of Spain." This was before we began to take on a mighty aspect ourselves, with the result that teams who visit Lansdowne Road are now regarded as taking on the might of us.

Part of the strangeness and uneasiness has to do with the premature assumption that we are already home and dried as regards qualification for the United States, and that it would be tantamount to a natural catastrophe, a disorder in the alignment of the planets, to thwart us of our destiny at this late stage.

So wishful has the thinking been, that before the Lithuania match, it seemed to be generally accepted that we needed three points to be sure of qualifying. It was an idea promulgated by Big Jack, and so revered has the oracle become, that large sections of the media seemed to accept this proposition, without recourse to some basic arithmetic.

In fact, we needed four points to be sure of qualifying, not three. Certainly, we could get three points and still qualify, but this is not the same thing at all, and with things shaping up for a bitter finale at the top of the group, it would be easier on the nerves if people got their sums right.

If we beat Spain, we qualify, regardless of what happens against Norn Iron, and it is the latter fixture which has contributed to some of the woolly thinking in this regard.

For understandable reasons, few people want to even contemplate the possibility of going to Windsor Park needing a result, and the concept of going there needing a win is far too horrible a thought for the fragile human psyche to entertain.

I think that we have eliminated this match altogether from our consciousness, calculating the points outcome with no reference to the permutations which may ensue if Spain do the dirty on us.

It is a self-protective mechanism which has had a two-fold effect, positive and negative. On the upside, it has concentrated the mind wonderfully for the match against Spain. The stakes are clearly laid out, we know the size of the job in hand, and can pitch our performance accordingly.

On the downside, the significance with which this match has been invented, could tend to overwhelm the troops with anxiety, this sense that it is a case of shit or bust.

Of course it is not, but it will feel like that if our margin of error disappears, and it is a case of shit or bust against a Norn Iron team who will become folk heroes for centuries to come if they manage to smite the Fenian hordes.

On paper, we are still odds-on to qualify, but at this stage of the proceedings, cool calculations are out the window, and in their place you have fear and loathing and jangled nerves and serious drinking.

An additional element in the yearning for a win over Spain is the growing sense of ambition which this Republic team has engendered. We want to beat them because we think that we should be winning matches like this, against opposition like this, if we are to go to America with an appropriate glide in our stride.

We are no longer satisfied to be scraping draws on the big occasion, creeping into exalted company by the back door, happy enough just to be there and have the crack.

It has been argued with some persuasiveness that this low-flying approach, emanating from Jack's belief that he had somehow put a respectable sheen over a ragged assortment of journeymen, held us back in Italy when we could have been shooting for the firmament.

It is a tad exaggerated, I feel, but with a current squad which is unquestionably formidable on both an individual and collective level, the mood is abroad that only a good thumping for Johnny Spaniard will appease the expectations which the team itself has raised.

There is unease, too, in the wake of the Lithuania match, an encounter of such strangeness that in its immediate aftermath, the balance of Jack's season seemed to go awry, as he lambasted the players for knocking the ball up to Niall Quinn and Tony Cascarino in an unimaginative fashion, and hoping to scramble something out of the subsequent confusion.

It sounded like he was being heretical to his own gospel, a bit like Thatcher saying that you shouldn't knock the European ideal, or that the miners are talking a lot of sense. The bollocking which he administered on that occasion should sting the lads out of the kind of defensive complacency which would have been badly punished by the accomplished Spaniards.

The Lithuania aberration can be dismissed on the grounds that Ireland thrives not only when they put the opposition under pressure, but when they are being put under pressure themselves. They are just not used to swanning around the park, queuing up to take pot-shots at the opposition. In the catatonic atmosphere of October 13, it will be time for Spain to reap the whirlwind.

I expect to hear the usual malarkey about Spain bottling out away from home, cowering beneath the physical and emotional onslaught, praying for the horror to end so they can return at great speed to their natural habitat of the jacuzzi and the massage parlour.

Funny, I always recall Spain's reputation as hatchetman par excellence, the meanest motherfuckers this side of Uruguay on a bad night. And I don't think that the picture has change all that much, that we can entertain romantic notions of a collective nervous breakdown as soon as the Spanish team coach cruises into Ballsbridge.

Anyway, the new all-seater Lansdowne will preclude the savage claustrophobia and dog's abuse which they endured the last time.

It is definitely shit or bust for them, and any qualms about Gaelic hostility will be far outweighed by the mauling they will receive back home in the context of a result which reads, "Ireland 1, Spain 0, Roy Keane scoring."

Thus, ordering in the beer and the tranquillisers, I leave you with the grim footnote: fuck the Pope, cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.