To explain. The system used for handing out tickets to the world's media here is pretty much as smooth as you could hope for. We pick what matches we want to go to by the end of April. Then we're sent one of two emails telling us we're either approved or we're on a waiting list. If we're on the waiting list, Fifa provide a neat little website for us to check telling us how many are on said list.

The website told us a good week in advance that the waiting list for Brazil v Croatia had 587 names on it. That's 587 on top of the 713 who had already been approved. If you ever needed confirmation of your long-held assumption that sports journalists are little more than spivs, free-loaders and wastrels, you may feel the number 587 provides it.

We may protest that your characterisation is unduly harsh and then you may point out that the waiting list for Saudi Arabia v Tunisia the following day had 21 names on it and, at that point, we may well shut up or at the very least wonder aloud where you got that figure from and which of our number ratted us out.

Anyway, that's how we, a small troupe of Irish Sunday football writers, knew there wasn't a hope. First of all, why would any of the 713 not turn up? We'd heard that an unexploded World War II bomb had been found just outside the stadium a week previously causing the media centre to be evacuated. We figured that maybe another such incident might prune the list a to~Huch but then we further figured another such incident would likely cause the game to be called off and then we'd be into baby and bathwater territory.

But we knew that upturned travel plans and the vicissitudes of World Cup life would cull at least a couple of dozen names. We knew as well that the sheer size of the waiting list would scare away a goodly portion of its number. These were the straws at which we clutched.

Zero hour dawned at the ticket desk in the Stadium Media Centre. We jinked our way to the front like Duffers with attitude, leaving Italians and Aussies and Uruguayans and more with twisted blood. We waited. An hour to the game. We didn't know if worming our way to the head of the queue was going to help at all but we wanted to give ourselves every chance.

All the while knowing we had no chance. There'd be maybe 75 tickets to be handed out and they'd go to Brazilians and Croats first, then Aussies and the Japanese who shared their group, then Germans, then journalists from other Balkan countries, then some from South America and then they'd be gone.

That was the food chain. We were so far down it, amoeba called us names.

A Fifa official called Nicolas came to the desk and shushed the 150 or so of us. He was French, early30s. He wore his Fifa suit impeccably. He bore the air of a man who'd spent his teens captaining the school debate team during the day, scoring hat-tricks for the football team in the evening and flitting between his pick of mademoiselles at night. His whole life, he'd known nothing but success and, as a result, he respected nothing but strength and power. He was not the droid we were looking for.

He started calling out names. It would be nice to report that the world's media stood calmly and politely and received his words with good grace. It would be nice to report that. It would be a lie. The shouting started after about 20 names.

There were pleases which begat pleeeeeeases which begat downright hostility which came close to begetting full-blown violence. Nicolas was unmoved.

He came past us. "Ireland?" we asked.

He smiled, possibly thinking of a Dingle girl who had once spent a summer working behind the bar in The Cruiskeen Lawn on the Rue des Halles. That, or he was smiling at our impudence. Nice try, mes amis. But not tonight. He moved on.

Other hearts to break. All in a night's work for Nicolas.

We retired to the media centre's cafe, there to drink coffee and laugh the laugh of the damned. We're not going to chance Brazil v Japan on Thursday.

But Holland v Argentina on Wednesday is a possibility. We're only round the corner from the Dutch after all.