There's a bigger picture that goes some way to explaining the gulf.

Let's take it for what it was.

(Just to scotch a few defences of the defeat, the Irish team that started the game was neither younger nor less experienced caps wise than their opponents and there was damn little between the benches). It was a lesson. A skills lesson in the basic fundamentals of football. Technique, movement, touch, pace, passing . . . all performed with an ease that made Irish efforts look very laboured and unnatural indeed. The way that Holland moved the ball around, over, under, past and through the willing but slightly headless Irish running probably had to be experienced in person to be properly admired.

Over 44,000 people did just that. As we say, it was a lesson.

A page of examples could be offered but a few will do the job. The awareness of Rafael van der Vaart to tee up goal number three and the elegant ease with which Klaas Jan Huntelaar clipped it over Paddy Kenny, especially only a moment after Alan O'Brien (only 21 and on his debut in fairness) passed up a three-onone down the other end. The fact that in the first half Holland's midfield trio . . . Schaars, Landzaat, Van der Vaart . . .

played over 90 passes and gave only five away while in the same time frame Ireland's central midfield managed just 14 (six of them forward). The sight of Theo Janssen waiting for a couple of minutes on the line before he could come on as his team casually stroked the ball around and worked a marvellous opening for Dirk Kuyt. Enough already.

Thing is, knocking a football around like that is ingrained in Dutch culture in much the same way knocking a sliotar against a wall is in Cork or Kilkenny. They cultivate wonderfully gifted, intelligent players like they do tulips. They have structures, youth academies at clubs with several teams at each level where kids join at the age of nine or 10 and spend the best part of a decade working on technique.

Bring them in for hours every day, set-up four on four or five on five to give them more touches of a ball than they know what do with. It's not competitive in the way we know the word here; the winning is in constantly improving, honing technique, not in scoring more goals than the other team. Young players spend their time up to the age of 16 without the hassles of winning and gaining points.

They call the Ajax academy "De Toekomst" . . . which means the future. It's pretty apt and to the point. They've come up with this method of evaluating and coaching players through TIPS . . . which stands for technique, insight, personality, speed. That, if you'll pardon the pun, is just the tip of the iceberg.

We're playing serious catch up in a multitude of ways.

Leaving aside the absence of an academy here that could be considered on the same planet as any of the Dutch clubs, there's no structure to support it. The majority of young players that show any potential are shipped off to England between 13 and 17 and it's a case of heads or tails on their development and progression. Although in many ways Dutch clubs have become feeders for the big fish, players are always in their early 20s or so before they leave the country and are fully developed. Eircom League clubs can barely afford to stay alive, never mind fund proper academies to bring players through. An Irish technical development plan was launched in 2004 but only in the last month were applications invited for positions of co-ordinator for an emerging talent programme, or project researcher to review and ensure the right balance between training and competition at different age groups.

Light years behind.

Now it's just about possible that this generation of Dutch youngsters will be known as a golden one in years to come so comparisons may be a tad unfair and unfortunate but that's the way our cookie crumbled. The 12 Irish players who got playing time on Wednesday evening in Greece for the Irish under-21s just about had 10 Premiership starts between them . . . and let's assume that games in the Premiership is where it's at for most of them. The Dutch under-21s (it's actually pretty much under-23 by the time the finals come around) who won the European Championships in the summer didn't have a player with less than 20 league appearances for his club last season. The clubs were all Dutch, a nice mixture of Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord, AZ Alkmaar and more but basically they were all regulars with top teams in a top European league, average age 20. A couple of examples from that group. Huntelaar we now know all about after two goals and two assists, hard to believe that was his first cap Wednesday night. Ditto Stijn Schaars who patrolled midfield with more confidence and assuredness than his 22 years and zero caps would suggest.

Expect names like Dwight Tierdalli, Ron Vlaar, Ismail Aissati and Daniel de Ridder to follow on from that winning team. That's on top of Ryan Babel, Hedwiges Maduro, Rafael van der Vaart, Wesley Sneijder, Robin van Persie and Arjen Robben who are all 23 or under. Scary?

Yeah it is.

There's an impact on sustainability as well. Of the Irish youth squads that qualified for World Cups in 1997 and 1999, only Damien Duff and Robbie Keane are what you could consider first-choice senior team members now.

Guys like Gary Doherty and Stephen McPhail have drifted off the scene, Colin Healy's been freakily unlucky, others have been left behind and fell into lower leagues or came home. Of the Dutch youth squad that qualified in 2001 alone, there were five at Lansdowne Road on Wednesday night . . . four of them starting . . .

and the vast majority of the rest are playing in a top league in Europe.

It's not just that the top quality guys aren't coming through so often, it's also that they're not getting enough games at their clubs. Players like Andy Reid and Liam Miller, once so exciting and fresh, have stagnated over the space of a couple of years with a lack of game time leaving no chance for improvement. Promising guys of 19/20 are morphing into mid-20s mediocrity because they haven't got a regular game for a few seasons. And if they're not playing for their clubs, they ain't going to be running out in the starting XI in green either. Meanwhile, that little list of players a few paragraphs up, (the Van der Vaarts, the Van Persies, the Babels, etc) get their 40-odd games a season and the gap gets larger and larger.

The negatives and the positives of the Irish performance and what it all might mean for crystal ball gazers can wait for another day. No call for panic or over-the-top reactions or writing off of chances.

Suffice to say for now that Given, Dunne, Duff and Keane will improve the spine of the team and that energy, intensity and decision making will have to step up a level to avoid a few spankings on the road this campaign. It's just that it's all a bit too much like urinating into a decent-sized hurricane at times with so much work to do, so many holes to be plugged. There are lessons to be learnt from the Dutch way, short and long term.

WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE YOU KNOW

DON'T fret. It has happened before and, well, things went on as normal. Sure, it was 40 years ago but in such times any comforts will do. On the night of the 4 May 1966, West Germany arrived in Dalymount Park as a warm up to their World Cup campaign. A disappointing crowd of just 20,000 turned out at the Phibsboro venue, their interest curtailed by an Irish side that had been ravaged by injuries. We should have known earlier in the week. . .

As Seamus Devlin put it in The Irish Times the next day. "West Germany's World Cup hopefuls had no difficulty in winning this one, right from the opening whistle. The only surprising feature was that they did not win this friendly international with a little more to spare. It was not expected that a makeshift Irish 11 would put up much of a show against the men that would be representing West Germany in the World Cup finals, nevertheless, one feels that the bad luck which dogged the efforts of the selectors in the past week was added to last night and in the long run we lost little in prestige through the result.

"Ireland tried to match the German masters and masters they were. A more perfect blend of footballers it would be hard to imagine and their well-drilled football had the Irish in trouble almost from the start and the fact that they were held to four goals speaks well of the Irish defence generally but more particularly of captain Charlie Hurley."

The German forwards, Haller and Overath, dominated throughout and gave more than one example of what would follow in England the following month. Overath netted twice with the others coming Haller and the masterful Beckenbauer.

"The Irish team had nothing to offer in return, " continued Devlin.

"Bobby Gilbert, of whom so much was expected, seemed overwrought by the occasion and could never get the better of Schultz, the imposing German centre-half. . . But neither of the Irish inside forwards came up to recognised international standards and Dunphy was timid to an exasperating degree."

Afterwards West Germany went on to reach the World Cup final while Ireland would wait another 22 years to reach a major finals. Might be best not to read too much into Wednesday night after all.

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND P Dunne (Manchester United), T Foley (Northampton), F Strahan (Shelbourne), M McGrath (Bradford), C Hurley (Sunderland; captain), J Hennessy (Shelbourne), F O'Neill (Shamrock Rovers), R Treacy (West Bromwich), R Gilbert (Shamrock Rovers), E Dunphy (Milwall), J Haverty (Shelbourne) WEST GERMANY Maier, Lutz, Kurbjuhn, Beckenbauer, Shultz, Hoettges, Grabowski, Haller, Seeler, Overath, Hornig Referee Mister WJ Mullan (Scotland) Ewan MacKenna