One duty to get out of the way at the start. Samba. There, said it. No need to mention it again. Brazil came to Lansdowne Road last night and deprived the press box of the usual comfort blanket of cliché. They didn't jump through hoops or balance footballs on their tanned noses, writes Tom Humphries
They resembled only vaguely those happy guys we see on the telly every few years. In the end, though, this was just a cold night in February and two teams getting through it.
Of course the aspirin box yellow and green jerseys were visually arresting and the mere sight of them got us humming bars of The Girl From Ipanema. In a far corner of the ground were huddled some 400 Brazilian fans whom we are sure were dancing to certain rhythms and expressing themselves through football etc etc. It was hard to tell.
There are certain caveats which come when you receive a ticket for a football friendly. Just because the world champions are playing doesn't guarantee a festival or even a fiesta of football. Things may be unaccountably flat. For the help of the uninitiated Brazil will be the team in yellow.
So it was last night. Not the worst exhibition Lansdowne has seen but not a night to be mythologised. For the first half hour or so, the Brazilians seemed understandably overawed by their surroundings. Who knew that teams still played in places like this? Is it a ground? Is it a folk museum? Ronaldo did the odd turn of course, the highlight being a shot which came off Shay Given's leg. Just enough from him to make it clear he wasn't just a bald, husky impostor. Little flicks and turns too from luminaries like Ronaldinho and Kaka but in the end we were left to make our own fun conjuring up nicknames for the chalky fellows in the green jerseys.
Keaninho had a glaring miss in the second half, having been set up by Morrissonaldo to whom we generously awarded the Man of the Match bauble.
With 25 minutes left and Shay Givens's hands yet to feel the sting of a shot there was a growing sense that the Irish could win this thing. To underline the point, Jason McAteer was inserted into the thick of things. Jason's hairline has receded since last we saw him here but his enthusiasm hasn't. Lansdowne greeted him like an old flame.
Nil all in the end. The Irish players swapped jerseys eagerly. The rest of us, well, we'd have been willing to settle for three three but to be honest, it wasn't like watching Brazil.