In a classy gesture at the end of an evening when the Irish football team didn't need to do anything else to enamour themselves to the Irish nation and media, Heimir Hallgrimsson presented our colleague Ed Leahy with a signed jersey to mark his final Republic of Ireland game as an RTÉ reporter.
Covering the Boys in Green at home and away for two decades, through not a lot of thick and too much thin, the Puskas Arena was the scene of Ed's last on-the-whistle report and his last press conference.
The latest member of a dwindling reporting pack to decide to leave the industry, at least temporarily. But what a way to go out.
Never a profession to be reluctant to talk and write about ourselves, with an inordinate number of veteran journalists recently leaving their organisations there have been many column inches devoted to the value and importance of sports reporters.
From reading these pieces the one quality above all others that seemed to be valued was the fact that 'old school’ reporters were never "fans with typewriters".
Nonsense. While we’re impartial when doing our work, don’t think for a second we don’t love to see Ireland – never ‘we’ or ‘us’ – win.
Of all the videos of celebration following Troy Parrott’s winner in Budapest I’ve seen – from Dublin Airport to London to Canada to Kiltimagh to Kevin Doyle running around the RTÉ studio - the one I’d love to see is the press box at the Puskas Arena.
All business no doubt. Just like the sports department in RTÉ.
While Doyler was doing his laps and saying mean things about Dominik Szoboszlai (sorry, Didi), the six of us on the online desk were jumping up and down and screaming – there may even have been a few half-hearted and brief hugs. It was a crazy 30 seconds.
Amid the hullabaloo I missed in real time Daragh Maloney immediately twigging the match-winner's resemblance to Robbie Keane's famous goal against Germany at the 2002 World Cup.
Kevin Doyle celebrates in RTÉ studios after Troy Parrott scores the winner in Budapest 🇮🇪
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) November 16, 2025
Match report here or on https://t.co/YXqp4pbqKj: https://t.co/LoesL8MQB8 pic.twitter.com/kNwfETLuO0
The high hoisted ball, the headed flick-on, the darting run and efficient finish. History repeating itself, 23 years later.
There are few Irish football moments that simply transport you back to where you were and the age you were when you witnessed them live.
Romania, 1990: Seven in the sitting room of my parents’ house.
Germany, 2002: Nineteen in the front bar of Mooney’s, Wexford Town.
Germany, 2015: Thirty-two in the press box in Aviva Stadium.
Italy, 2016: Thirty-three in the press box in Lille.
Obviously any such list is subjective but it’s hard to make a case for any moment in the past nine years that comes close to the emotional release of Robbie Brady’s winner against Italy or Parrott’s hat-trick against Hungary.
That’s 10 years ago.
There are football-obsessed kids up and down the country born since Brady scored against the Azzurri. And that’s before we get into the argument that it was a weakened, under-motivated Italian side who had already secured their passage to the Euro 2016 knockout stages.
That is a generation of children who have never experienced the all-consuming rapture that a shock Irish football win against a fancied opponent can bring.
And they get two in four days.
A generation raised on the thin gruel of Nations League wins over Finland and Scotland.
A generation sustained by World Cup qualifier away wins over Wales and Austria, which only delivered a chastening play-off shellacking at the hands of Denmark.
A generation entertained by nothing more than the culture wars between the rival factions of the Stephen Kenny era.
People wonder why kids support Premier League clubs and worship Cristiano Ronaldo. It is about creating memories and, unfortunately, Irish football had suspended its memory creation for a generation.
Even allowing for the fact that these were two wins to rescue a campaign and secure nothing more than a play-off semi-final, they were making up for it in spades last week.
As positive as the strides have been in the League of Ireland it is still a tribal, local engagement. The exploits of Shelbourne or Shamrock Rovers in the UEFA Conference League are not going to have colleagues gathering around the water cooler.
Not to engage in point-scoring on the first inaugural St Troy’s Day, but it is quite clear that no team in the land comes close to stopping and uniting the nation like the Republic of Ireland men’s senior team.
GAA is a tribal exercise. Like the League of Ireland, just on a bigger scale.
The women’s soccer team does not have the heritage and history of Jackie’s Army, Saipan and all that collective memory. But the World Cup in Australia in 2023 was a start.
For this generation there is the consumption of the football and the consumption of the consumption of the football and little differentiation is made between the two
We have been spoiled by the success of our men’s rugby team in recent years but the small number of elite nations, the fact professionalism is only 30 years old and the failure to make the last-four of a World Cup may explain why it hasn’t yet had its Troy moment.
Not to knock rugby, but it would be the same in England, France, Scotland, Wales and Argentina… in arguably every top-tier rugby country bar New Zealand and possibly South Africa, soccer is more likely to ‘stop the nation’.
Football is the largest participatory sport in Ireland and it has received a recent boost in the form of Government funding for the League of Ireland academies, which should go some way to developing a functioning industry that can fill the developmental vacuum left by Brexit.
But let’s not get bogged down in sports administration on St Troy’s Day.
This is about the vibes. And how the vibes are disseminated.
We still have the random conversation between OAPs in the supermarket queue, speculating over play-off opponents. We still have the five-minute conversation about Liam Scales’ heading ability with our rugby and tennis obsessed mother-in-law.
But added into that is the sharing of videos on WhatsApp, Snapchat, X, Instagram, TikTok.
The number of social media users in Ireland increased by a third to over four million between Brady’s goal against Italy in 2016 and Parrott’s hat-trick in Budapest.
For this generation there is the consumption of the football and the consumption of the consumption of the football and little differentiation is made between the two.
Football will dominate 2025’s Reeling in the Years, but we don’t need to wait for the programme.
Joxer went to Stuttgart, Con Houlihan missed Italia ’90 because he was in Italy, but this latest generation of Irish fans can all imagine partying with the Ireland players in Malahide and dream of going to USA ’26.
Only Donald Trump and ICE could think that’s a bad thing.
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