The week after the 2002 election was when Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy had their infamous row at the Irish team's World Cup training camp in Saipan. As a result, politics was knocked off the front pages, writes Noel Whelan.
The nation became obsessed about and took sides in the Keane-McCarthy row. There have been moments this week when one wished that an all-consuming controversy from the world of sports or entertainment could achieve the same effect on post-election coverage.
We have had a run of groundhog days. Five Independents, two PDs and six Greens became the centre of the political universe as the media speculated about and analysed every suggestion or rumour as to who Bertie Ahern has or has not been talking to about government formation.
Having endured an elongated pre-election phase, sat through a dramatic campaign, delivered a verdict in the ballot box, watched and listened to a weekend of results coverage (in record numbers), the public want to move on. The voters have spoken and expect the politicians to get on with it. One suspects the public will begin to tire of government formation if it goes beyond June 14th. They want the make-up of the new government sorted and back to tackling the enduring problems with public services.
Above all else, this election was about whether the voters wanted Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach for another term. The answer to that question was a resounding yes, and no post-election posturing by Enda Kenny can change that. Fine Gael, to emphasise that it did well in the election and perhaps to ward off any questioning of Kenny's leadership, has decided not to concede. Instead, Kenny has engaged in a futile sideshow of talking about trying to form a government. The stance is getting tiresome and it does him no credit. He should concede.
Whatever about Fine Gael, the Green Party and Labour can be forgiven for putting their post-election assessment on hold until they clarify whether or not they will be in government.
Sinn Féin has no such luxury. This election result has significant implications for the party, both North and South. It also has particular implications for Adams's leadership, since it is he who must carry most responsibility for their bad election campaign. Now that it has been stalled electorally, the party's strategy in the Republic has to be re-assessed. There has been no peace dividend for Sinn Féin south of the border, or at least no additional one since the last election.
This is not because the public here is indifferent to the fact that Sinn Féin has gone into government in the North. It may, however, have much to do with the fact that walking this course took Sinn Féin so long and that it was done begrudgingly.
The end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, in the wake of the Northern Bank robbery and the McCartney murder, was when Northern Ireland-related issues played loudest in Irish politics. Sinn Féin came badly out of that period in the eyes of the southern electorate. Although decommissioning and disbandment of the IRA followed, Sinn Féin lost ground it could never regain. The casual way in which the party abandoned long-held policy positions in the lead in to the election and the extent to which it was revealed to be a predominately Northern-led and Northern-managed party also did not help its campaign.
The myth of Sinn Féin's supposedly unrivalled work rate "on the ground" has also been shattered. The results show that they have been more than matched by Fianna Fáil in places like Finglas, Cabra and Tallaght. Whereas in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin is now a catch-all party dominant on the nationalist side, in the Republic it has been, and it now appears will continue to be, a niche party on the far left, ardent republican end of the spectrum. There is no need or room for another catch-all party in the Republic and Sinn Féin will find it difficult to grow.
This weekend is also the appropriate moment to assess the performance of punditry in this election. It was not good. Most of us predicted the extent to which Fine Gael would rise, the fact that Labour was likely to stagnate again, the extent to which Independents would be squeezed and the fact that the Progressive Democrats were likely to implode.
However, almost all of us got Fianna Fáil very wrong. While Fianna Fáil lost three-quarters of the dozen or so seats most pundits reckoned they would, they also did spectacularly well in making gains in places few had foreseen. The error made by most of us was that we gave little credence to the party's claim about making gains, dismissing it as hype or wishful thinking. Separating hype from insight can be difficult. The Progressive Democrats, for example, were predicting up to polling day that they would win 10 seats. However, we underestimated Fianna Fáil's capacity for recovery and, to that extent, they are entitled to gloat.
We were also wrong in our assessment of the opinion poll published on the campaign's last weekend. Most pundits (and it appears most in Fianna Fáil) reckoned it was overstating Fianna Fáil at 41 per cent. So an apology is owed to TNS/mrbi. It proves again that predicting is a precarious endeavour.