So a tale and a trip of two halves.
November internationals generally fall on the week of Louise's birthday but with the England game falling on the day itself some other cultural activities were in order for the weekend in London.
We arrived on Friday evening and made our way to Louise's cousin Ciaran's house in Ruislip where he and his wife Lora were putting us up for the few days. Arriving around 9 we decided to stay in and had a nice few drinks in the house catching up. The temptation to stay up till after 3am to watch the Katie Taylor Amanda Serrano fight was passed and we called it a night around one in the morning.
After being treated to a fine breakfast we caught up with the Taylor fight, which I have to say she was a little lucky to get the nod given the harsh point deduction in the eighth round, and then headed into the city to take in the sights before hitting Camden to explore the market and catch up with The Enterprise, an old pub I frequented on previous visits to the town.
Following that we had a nice meal in a Caribbean restaurant and headed to the West End to take in a show, The Book of Mormon, which gave us a great laugh.
Post-theatre drinks taken, we rounded off the night with a stroll through Chinatown before getting the underground back to Ruislip to get some rest before game day.
A good night's rest had and another breakfast served by our gracious hosts we made our way to Willesden Green for an early start to meet up with our good friend Timmy, or Borussia as YBIG posters would know him, and get some pre-game refreshment in before the early 5pm kick-off. We headed to an Irish bar called Angie's thinking it wouldn't be as busy as the designated pubs in the immediate vicinity of Wembley and were able to get a table handy enough.
The fact that we were outside the zone where pubs were specifically catering to only Irish or only English fans meant that there was a mix of fans present but any banter was good-natured with chants of 'En-ger-land, En-ger-land, En-ger-land' being met with replies of 'Come on You Boys in Green' without any aggravation. It was a far cry from watching the 1990 World Cup games in Kilburn back when I was living in London and you really needed to watch your back wearing Ireland colours.
A former work colleague and regular traveller to away games Caimin also joined us and it was great to catch up with him before we made our move to get to the stadium with time to spare before kick-off.
A few more familiar faces in Tom, Fiona, Sagey and Sandra were bumped into on the concourse under the stand before we found a good spot pitchside and settled in for the game.
The sight of a load of British soldiers on the pitch unfurling a flag before kick-off brought home just how far military culture seems to be bizarrely embedded in English society these days and set the tone for the anthems with Amhran na bhFiann roundly booed by the home fans which provoked a similar reaction to God Save the King from the away end. Personally, I find the booing of anthems embarrassing but given the vitriol our anthem was greeted with I completely understand the reaction.
With that pantomime finished, it was game time. Ireland tried a new formation, with Nathan Collins deployed in the holding midfield role rather than his regular centre-half berth. And in the first half, it worked really well. I don't think England tested Caoimhín Kelleher throughout the half, and although we probably had only about 30% of the possession, you could argue that we could have had two penalties, let alone one.
The first of those was one that makes you wonder what the point of VAR is if they're going to ignore situations like the one that saw Evan Ferguson hauled to the ground by Marc Guehi. Watching in real time I wondered if it had been a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other but those thoughts were banished when they surprisingly showed the replay on the stadium's big screens which clearly showed the handful of Ferguson's shirt that Guehi had a hold of. Cue serious anger in the Irish end and a sense that once again big decisions weren't going our way.
That feeling was only exacerbated when Sammie Szmodics was taken down by Kyle Walker in the box and the ref once again waved Irish appeals away. The only other major point of interest was the cheap yellow card awarded against Liam Scales for kicking the ball away to prevent England from taking a quick free kick. We weren't to know it at the time but how that would come back to haunt us.
So half-time arrived and I felt very satisfied with the first-half performance with Festy Ebosele impressing on those rare occasions we got forward and the experiment with Collins in midfield suggesting that it could be a tactic worth persevering with in the future. Now if only we could keep it up and possibly build on that in the second half.
Well, it took all of eight minutes for that hope to evaporate. And another six minutes after that for it to turn to humiliation.
First off, Harry Kane was handed possession from a slack Ferguson pass and then played a beautiful through ball to Jude Bellingham who had his legs unceremoniously taken from under him by Liam Scales. A penalty and a second yellow for Scales deflated any optimism present in the away end and when Kane sent Kelleher the wrong way to put the hosts ahead and ensure there was no repeat of the Corkman's heroics from the previous Thursday.
The collapse that followed speaks volumes about the fragile mentality this Ireland squad has developed over the Stephen Kenny era. One became two within three minutes as Anthony Gordon made hay from a defensive mix up and two became three moments later as Conor Gallagher got onto a Guehi flick-on from a corner to poke home from a couple of yards.
It was hard to believe how quickly things had disintegrated from what had been an excellent first 50 minutes to a damage limitation exercise and even that wasn't something we could carry out. While we did manage to stem the flow for nearly 20 minutes, another two quickfire goals on 76 and 79 minutes from Jarred Bowen with his first touch and Roy Keane's future son-in-law Taylor Harwood-Bellis respectively put the hat on what was a total capitulation.
The rest of the half passed with more interest on the steward's attempts to remove a Palestinian flag from the block next to us, sparking a few 'Free Palestine' chants than the match as we waited for the ref to put us out of our misery.
On the plus side at least we weren't kept back in the stadium at full-time so we trudged off into the night and on to a local boozer called The Liquor Store where we drowned our sorrows and completed our post-mortem of the game.
In the cold light of day, there were some positives to be had despite the paddling we took. Playing Collins in midfield worked well till the red card and we overall looked more defensively solid than in a long time for that period. Ebosele impressed again in the first half and despite his error that led to the penalty, Ferguson had some moments particularly when he was denied that clear penalty of his own.
On the negative side of the ledger is that mental fragility I mentioned earlier and there's no way to tackle that other than starting to get more results against teams ranked similar to ourselves like we did against Finland in this group. And while I see potential in the goalkeeping area (Kelleher, Bazunu and Travers all look more than capable), the defence (Collins, Scales and Ebosele) and in attack (Ferguson, Szmodics, Ogbene), the lack of options in our midfield are a huge concern. Josh Cullen can look tidy enough but I've not really seen him impose himself on a game while Jayson Molumby and Jason Knight look like honest Championship players and no more. And it's hard to see where the required improvement in that position is coming from.
In the short-term, a win over two legs in our promotion/relegation play-off next March is essential to try and build some positive momentum going into the World Cup qualifiers.
We'll have to face one of Armenia, Bulgaria, Kosovo or Slovakia and of those four potential opponents, Slovakia is the only country I've visited before so I'd hope to avoid them. An opportunity to gain revenge on Armenia after our defeat under Kenny could be a nice, if very lengthy, trip as I've heard good things from those who've already been to Yerevan. Bulgaria were thrashed 5-0 by Northern Ireland in their campaign yet also beat the North 1-0 in Sofia so it's hard to know what to make of that possible match-up. And Kosovo were fairly free-scoring while getting some good results in their group so that could be a tricky one as well. The draw next Friday will be interesting.
And with a World Cup qualifying draw to also follow on December 13th, there's plenty to look forward to in relation to trips away if not quite the action on the pitch! We live in hope that it's the results against Finland rather than those against England that point the way to a brighter future.