It is the morning after the night before and as I get ready to go to the funeral of Noel O'Reilly I can't help thinking how proud he would have been of his beloved St Patrick's Athletic and their outstanding performance against Hertha Berlin at the RDS last evening.
Quite simply, it was the most exhilarating 0-0 draw I can remember, an emotionally gut-wrenching performance that deserved so much more reward for the players, staff and supporters of the proud Inchicore club.
Noel would have loved it.
St Pat's were disciplined and well-organised, with a clear gameplan which they applied with the perfect balance of wit, courage and skill.
They approached the second leg with a two-goal deficit to recover and while statistics will show that the German side went through 2-0 on aggregate, that just goes to prove the old adage that there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
With two instinctive point-blank saves from the Hertha keeper, two reasonable claims for a St Pat's penalty, two shots that rattled the same upright, two chances for substitute John Murphy it looked, like Noel O'Reilly and Brian Kerr, that everything came in pairs.
And, even with two minutes of normal time remaining on the clock, I truly believed that Pat's would get the two goals needed to bring the tie to extra-time and finish off their more illustrious opponents.
It has been a traumatic time for all supporters of the League of Ireland. The word 'beleaguered' has been creeping into the space before the name of current sponsors eircom, as we reporters describe the issues surrounding the domestic game.
But the Saints' performances in Europe this season, as well as Drogheda's wonderful effort in Kiev, has put a different slant on a turbulent and troubled season.
I always felt that the move of the UEFA Cup match to the RDS from Inchicore would go against Pat's. Hertha were uncomfortable enough with the quality of the football played by the hosts. Imagine how much more uncomfortable they would have been on the banks of the Camac?
Picture the scene. The luxury Hertha Berlin coach ferries the multi-million euro worth of sulking talent from their five-star bolt hole at the Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge to Richmond Park, Inchicore.
'Where's the Stadium?' they would have asked and they would then have had to endure the culture shock of walking down the lane between the charming 'Coronation Street' style terrace of houses on Emmet Road before reaching Noel O’Reilly’s favourite 'Field of Dreams'.
By the way, the Hertha coach drove to the RDS yesterday the 20 metres or so it took to get from their hotel to their dressing rooms!
The 5pm kick-off suited German television and one cannot begrudge St Pat's earning as much money as possible from their European adventure, but the kick-off time was hardly conducive to attracting a capacity crowd.
The size of the crowd was an interesting indicator of where we are with the domestic game and what it means to the greater population of Ireland who, for the moment at least, don't have League of Ireland blood coursing through their veins.
Leinster and Munster can attract over 18,000 to the same venue for the second most important competition those clubs can enter. A few years ago you would struggle to get hundreds to watch an inter-provincial match between those two. That in itself is a measure of how professional rugby has re-invented itself.
Surely there's a lesson to be learned for professional soccer here?
The supporters of the domestic game are a hardy bunch. They are intense and passionate and loyal and, yes, sometimes they overindulge in navel-gazing, but that's just the nature of the passion.
Sadly, for the moment at least, the audience for League of Ireland football isn't quite as big as we would like it to be. However they are a discerning audience. And they are demanding. And they are right - when you analyse the St Pat’s performance - when they say we in RTÉ should be fully behind our own teams and not Manchester United or Celtic or Arsenal and their exploits in Europe.
That small, but beautifully formed League of Ireland audience, more than most, requires a self-respect in the face of competition from a much bigger, flashier world-dominating Barclays Premier League. Mind you, Portsmouth versus Tottenham is a tougher watch than Rovers versus Bohs any day.
The Irish game, and by extension the audience which we hope to grow over the next few years, requires a validation that other sports don't. Noel O'Reilly understood this.
And St Patrick's Athletic understand that too. Noel, no doubt, was smiling down on the RDS last night, on the night they drove ol’ Dixie down...and the night they drove some demons and negativity away. The night we were proud to be Irish, once again.
Tony O'Donoghue is Group Football Correspondent for RTÉ.
