Man of the Match: After a night like this - and after all that's gone before in the qualifying campaign - there's not a whole lot left to be said, which made the conversation short and not so sweet when Richard Dunne was cornered for a word about the scoreless draw with Switzerland.

He'd done enough to earn himself the man-of-the-match award, but that wasn't going to be enough to save the night, or ultimately Ireland's chances of making the World Cup finals in Germany next year.

Words like frustrated and heartbreaking were repeated but Dunne knew as well as anyone that after such a positive start to the campaign it had all ended on a sorry note - as if nothing about the final chapter would go to plan.

"Even after the last game against France and Cyprus we knew it was probably going to come down to this," he said, "where the win would probably have seen us through. That's the way it would have turned out, but unfortunately it didn't fall for us tonight."

The draw in Paris now seems like a world away, and ultimately the two games against Israel turned out to be the final barrier between making Germany next summer.

"Yeah," admitted Dunne, "we had them in our hands, and just didn't get the points we needed to get off them. But fair play to the other teams that did."

Tactically, Ireland's chances always appeared limited, especially when resorting to sending repeated long balls down on the tall Swiss defenders.

"Well yeah, but when there's such a big prize at the end of it, players eventually just want to get the ball into the box. You have to take your chance, even if it goes out the window. So it was just trying to get a bit of luck there at the end. Get the ball in there, and see what we could do.

"But then their defence did play really well. There were very strong, so it was just frustrating for us."

Without being prompted Dunne then refers to match referee, the German Markus Merk:

"He gave us absolutely nothing either all through the game. So it's just a bad night."

So ends a sad week for Irish soccer, where all the hope, hype and excitement has evaporated into nothing.

"It's been difficult, probably for all of us," concluded Dunne. "There's been a lot of pressure on all of us, with people scrutinising how we prepare for the games. And then our performance on Saturday. We all knew it wasn't good enough but the reaction from the media was probably over the top. Especially with this game coming up so soon.

"Fair enough, it wasn't a great performance on Saturday. But we still needed the bit of backing. So it's been a difficult week, and as I say just very disappointing the way it's all turned out."