Our World Cup Overfloweth!

The manner in which they went about it left a lot to be desired in terms of aesthetics, but if it truly is the hallmark of a good team to win convincingly on the scoreboard while playing like dogs, then on the evidence of Nicosia, Mick McCarthy's team should herewith be installed as ante-post favourites not to qualify for Korea/Japan 2002, but to win it.

The Nicosia result was nothing if not an upsetting of the form book. For a Republic of Ireland team taking the field in this sort of situation, against dogged opponents in humid conditions on a tight pitch, to score in the first half at all, much less add a second before half-time, is not the done thing at all.
Better by far to make the fans sweat like pigs, before putting them out of their misery with a 90th-minute backheel through a crowded penalty area and between the keeper's legs. It doesn't really matter at which end it goes in.
Those of us who are paid to study the form book for a living spent the build-up to the game harking back to recent Cypriot shows of defiance. Among other things, they effectively stopped Russia getting to France '98 by drawing 1-1 with them in Limassol, they cost Spain's last manager his job by giving them a 3-2 wellying three years ago, and they nearly kept Holland scoreless last November before the superior fitness of the Dutch kicked in with 15 minutes to go.
Ireland made light of such danger signs with a confident performance which made up for in wholehearted endeavour what it lacked in guile. Robbie Keane was appalling, but then he has been due a bad game for Ireland for some time, and it's best to get it out of the way in a match like this one.
At the back, where Gary Breen continues to look about as comfortable as a cellist fumbling with an ukulele, there were more dismaying signs of the defensive sloppiness which pervaded the entire first half in Lisbon and the last 20 minutes in Amsterdam.
Things will no doubt improve when Stephen Carr returns, and when Kenny Cunningham gets a bit more first-team action under his belt. However, given that we appear to be well sorted for midfielders and goalkeepers, the back four is the area that should take up most of McCarthy's thoughts between now and whenever the next match gets played.
The exception to this miasma of mediocrity was, of course, Roy Keane, whose contemptuous swatting aside of the Cypriot defenders for his second goal was worth enduring all the muck that had preceded it.
On his radio programme recently, Eamon Dunphy raised the interesting question of why, whenever fat men in dark blazers gather to draw up World Player of the Year shortlists, the name of Roy Keane is conspicuous by its absence, despite the incontrovertible evidence that he is surely one of the three finest footballers on Planet Earth. It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the swarthy, Latin lover-type features of Figo et al are way more marketable than the grimacing visage of a shaven-headed Irish monster who looks like he eats newborn lambs for breakfast, would it?
And so the group grinds on, with the three makeweights beginning to fall by the wayside as the serious business hots up, and the fixture list now seemingly not worth the paper it's written on due to the foot and mouth crisis. Because the Andorra game took place after this edition of hotpress had gone to the printers, Foul Play has no way of knowing whether our remorseless march towards the summit of Group Two continued apace with another four-goal rogering administered to the hapless minnows, or whether the game went down in history as another foul nadir to rank with the Liechtenstein fiasco of 1995.
This is a not unfamiliar scenario for Foul Play, as he finds himself dragooned into offering up a snap judgment on games which have yet to unfold as he types these very words.
The last couple of times I tried this, I got it spectacularly wrong, calling Man United's 1997-1998 title showdown with Arsenal as a 4-1 win for United (Arsenal won 1-0) and predicting that Ireland would rack up a two-goal advantage in the first leg of their Euro 2000 play-off with Turkey (1-1).
On the basis that the third time's the charm, and that I surely have to get one of these forecasts right at some stage, I confidently predict a three-nil drubbing for the Andorrans. But you didn't hear it from me.