LockerRoom: It's an odd experience covering a World Cup qualifying group and playing each country twice. You get to see the same bunch of foreign hacks at least that many times and realise that although all foreign journalists are necessarily more cosmopolitan, more chic (I'm not including English friends here) and on much better terms with their national teams' players we're all the same sad bunch of losers underneath. When the anthem plays and the whistle blows you want your guys to win.LockerRoom

From now until the end of the World Cup in Germany next summer those of us working at the competition will hear nothing but bitter words from people in proper jobs.

"That's not a job you have, that's a bleedin' holiday!" "Very nice. And you get paid for this?" And so on.

And yet we'll bite our lips bravely and stop ourselves from uttering the most grotesque solecism a fan can hear. It's better for us hacks if our guys don't actually qualify. Much better! Consider a World Cup without the Irish. There's no pre-World Cup training camp to cover. No craggy island in the North Sea that the FAI are planning on not bringing footballs to. No chance of being billeted for a month with a team of millionaires who look ill every time they clap eyes on you. No dreary press conferences with marginal players who utter insufficient cliches to sate the demands of a sports desk crazy with World Cup fever. No tracking down the source of every half-baked rumour. No pleading for a word as the lads stampede through the mixed zone.

There's a chance to work with, well, the simple dignity we all crave.

Compare the last two World Cups from an Irish journalist's point of view. France '98 was a long and pleasant dream. Getting up every day, enjoying a light and reviving breakfast before taking a train to some sun-kissed city. As the train skimmed through fields of swaying sunflowers the journalist might plug in his laptop (yes, they have such facilities on French trains) and do a little work before taking lunch and a little nap prior to arriving at la gare, there to take an air-conditioned shuttle bus to le stade to watch le World Cup, the only snag being that the journalist was obliged to provide une petite match report to the employers when it was all over. Ah. It was indeed very much as if le job was one long vacances in le soleil.

On the other hand World Cup 2002 with our boys not merely involved in the competition but scoring highly on the controversy and narkiness indices was more like spending the summer in a coalmine littered with ominously mute canaries.

Elsewhere (nearby in fact) the World Cup was unfolding in tantalising fashion and from the stygian darkness in which we laboured we could catch momentary glimpses of its glory carried down to us like dust motes on slender shafts of light.

Back on the chain gang though, even when the 24-hour Keano Watch shifts ceased to be mandatory, we were grappling with questions no serious adult should have to grapple with. Would the general embargo on using Alan Kelly's opinion that the Germans "had to be respected" hold till Friday? What is the meaning of Richard Dunne? Is David Connolly necessary? And we were the lucky ones. From the English camp came news of slayings. Tabloid posses roamed the press area ransacking it for team news and quotes. One hack who correctly guessed and printed the England line-up for the opening match was eaten alive by crazed colleagues.

And yet on Wednesday night in Lansdowne Road if the ball corooms inelegantly of a French bottom and slithers into the French net to give Ireland an undeserved lead the rejoicing among the badly-dressed denizens of the press box shall be unconfined and undignified. We shall punch the air and yelp and it will only be a minute before we ask each other learnedly, "Whose arse did it go in off?"

It's a strange phenomenon. Ireland at a World Cup would be most enjoyably watched on a television set in a flat with those people from the Carlsberg ads. Yet you want to be there, regardless of the pain.

I, for instance, have suffered more than most at the hands of the Germans. People will say it was all a long time ago and that next year's World Cup would be an opportune time for Germany and myself to bury our differences. We'll see.

At the Munich Beer Festival of 1981, sporting a shaven head and a splendid tan, I was mistaken several times for a Turk. This didn't involve comical misunderstandings which left us all laughing at the good of it. Groups of German youths identifying somebody (well, tragically, me) as a Turk sometimes feel inclined to give the Turk (me) a good kicking. The legendary German efficiency is seldom more evident than when it comes to a good kicking. Three beatings-up in eight days. It's lucky there were other distractions and widely available forms of anaesthetic.

Next summer, probably in the company of a documentary team, I will return for the first time. The cameras will capture such poignant moments as me revisiting the laneway where I fell for the third time or pointing to the Ferris wheel from which, suspended upside down, I took revenge on the local population by throwing up (or down?). Many units of the local anaesthetic were offered to the Bavarian air. We may also revisit the bumper cars but let's not spoil the story.

The point is there is something visceral and instinctive about a person's response to watching their country play soccer and even we hacks, whose professional obligation it is to retain a veneer of cold objectivity, go a little off beam when Robbie Keane is somersaulting. Even those of us who will have a handier working summer next year if the Irish players are watching the tournament on telly want those adrenalising moments which make it all worth while.

That's the magic of the World Cup and weeks like this. You see eight teams through to Germany already, the roster filling up fast, and there is a sense of harsh exclusion - a sense of urgency.

It's not just a reflexive nationalism or partisanship. It's not merely that you feel Brian Kerr deserves a World Cup. It's something historic and atavistic. Since Don Givens scored the hat-trick against the Russians down in Pisser Dignam's Field all those years ago there's been a pure joy in seeing us punch above our weight.

There was a minority feeling during the Charlton era and to a lesser extent during the McCarthy years that the team's often crude "up and at 'em" approach was a betrayal of a football history and that we were capable of better at least aesthetically.

Probably that was true given the players involved but that passion and aggression have become part of our football tradition too and when your mind turns in hope towards Lansdowne on Wednesday night passion is what you think of and pray for.

Too many of our recent bad days have been insipid. If we are bland on Wednesday we will lose. Whatever we aspire to we don't quite have the technicians to get there. Pace and physicality, as tactical weapons, are just as valid as formations and patterns.

It's an uneven fight. We Irish have 19 men playing in the Premiership if you include David Connolly, newly arrived to spread the cheer in Wigan. Compare the day jobs of those 19 to those of Les Bleus. That warrior streak in us is what evens things up. A declaration like that famous Keano tackle against the Dutch is what will ignite the attendance, not a chin-rubbing appreciation of tactical nuance and technical excellence.

We can play a little football but let's not forget that while the papers were noting the return of Zidane, Makelele and Thuram they were also wondering whether Clinton Morrison would be at Norwich this season. There's a gulf. In this fight we're the underdog but it's the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog in the fight, that matters. Let's rumble.