That was rough, Robbie. Real rough. She has to walk around the town now and face people who saw it.

Small-town people, Robbie. People who might just believe what they see on the telly. How can she look them in the eye after this? I keep telling her not to watch the damn show but she's a stubborn woman.

Don't get me wrong, I know we've made mistakes some of us. I mean, ever since the summer, anyone reading the Sunday Tribune's coverage of the Ireland team has been treated to pieces actually standing up for Steve Staunton. I know, Robbie, I know. It was wrong of me to defend the indefensible like that. I hold my hands up, sometimes we get it wrong. It's part and parcel of the game, comes with the job. But you've got to understand, Robbie . . . I wasn't doing it for a laugh, no more than you were missing chances against every team apart from San Marino for a laugh.

And you know the saddest part, Robbie? Much more of this and some of the younger fellas might think it's not worth the hassle any more. Covering the international team used to be a dream gig, but now you'd have to wonder. Remember the poor lad who asked you out in Bratislava if you were worried about the fact that it's seven years since you scored away from home in a competitive game for Ireland and you sneered and said you weren't bothered? How's he supposed to feel today? Hurt, Robbie.

Like the rest of us.

But enough. It's over now. And by Wednesday at the latest, it will all be over for Staunton as well. The members of the 10-man board of the FAI don't want Tony O'Donoghue and his RTE microphone waiting on the footpath beyond every door they walk out of for any longer than is necessary. When they meet, there will be two issues up for discussion . . .

Staunton's removal and the growing unrest at the way John Delaney has handled the whole farrago.

Delaney's pointed distancing of himself from Staunton's appointment in his RTE interview on Thursday has angered those who were involved back then. According to one report yesterday, members of the board will bring up his blatant handwashing exercise at the meeting to decide Staunton's fate. Because there is no doubt at all that the kingmaker was Delaney and that those who rubberstamped his choice did so as much out of duty as conviction. "The board accepted a recommendation to allow three members headhunt a manager and they came back looking for approval of Steve Staunton as manager, " said a source close to the board. "It was never going to be refused as the board had to back the selection committee, even if people had reservations."

While Delaney will not make the same mistake again in the search for Staunton's successor, his power within the FAI and his faith in his own decision-making ability are such that he is still certain to have close to the final say on who is presented to the board. The initial search will be conducted by a British-based recruitment company and, as with the interview processes that led to both Staunton's and Brian Kerr's appointment, is likely to take until early in the new year. Although there will be no competitive internationals for the best part of a year, the intention will be to have the new man before February's rumoured friendly against Brazil in Croke Park.

Of course, we're talking about Staunton in the past tense here even though the plug hasn't yet been officially pulled. But although he will dig in and make sure he gets the payoff he's due, nobody can argue he has any more than a contractual hold on the job now. Indeed, it's hard to argue that he ever had anything more than that.

The widely-accepted claim about the Irish squad during Staunton's tenure has been that whatever about results and performances, at least he'd brought the fun back to playing for Ireland. The video sessions that had so bored the players during the Kerr era had been replaced by PlayStation tournaments in the team hotel. Richard Dunne and Robbie Keane told Staunton that they never learned anything from those DVDs that they were given on the opposition and so they went to the wall to be 823 3 12 12 9 replaced by banter-filled quiz nights in which players were given pictures of various club jerseys from around Europe to identify.

Stephen Hunt gave an interesting insight into intra-squad relations on Wednesday night when he was asked about the stories emerging that Stephen Ireland was reluctant to join the squad again because some players had taken the banter thing a bit too far, specifically with regard to Ireland's hair. There had been suggestions floating around that Ireland had been teased about getting implants to cure baldness over the summer and that he had at one stage been wrestled to the ground during a bout of slagging, much to his annoyance. Hunt rejected this but didn't exactly spare Ireland's feelings in doing so.

"The only thing that happened with the players was that he was treated with respect. He was one of the guys, it was as simple as that. I don't know where this business of him being held down on the ground by two players came from. That's stupid. It never happened. There's always banter. You only don't get banter if people don't like you. Can you imagine how much stick I get over my hair? Stephen has got his own problems. With Ireland he got looked after and he got treated no different. If he got bullied I'd say it. But he wasn't."

So there was a bit of slagging, a bit of banter about the hair?

"There wasn't even that. There was no banter about his hair, nothing was said about his hair. It's grown four inches in a year. He knows that himself. He's big enough, like. We were disappointed that he didn't stay and play. He's got his own problems and he's got to deal with it, but only Stephen Ireland can deal with it and that's it. But we've all had hard childhoods and he has to be a man. He's playing in the big boys' world now."

Staunton was roundly praised for the way he dealt so sensitively with the fall-out from the Ireland situation but, listening to Hunt, you can't but wonder if he shouldn't have done more to nip the problem in the bud early on. The way many involved with the squad . . . players and staff . . .

speak of Ireland these days, it's obviously been clear for a while that he has a different make-up and personality to the others and yet despite him having been the team's best player in the first half of the campaign, a situation was allowed to develop where he felt he didn't want a part of it any more.

Forget for a moment about tactics. Forget about team selection.

Forget about coaching. A squad where someone as genial and laidback as Hunt can feel the need to tell the world that one of his teammates ought to grow up and get over himself is not a well-managed one and no amount of Keane's doe-eyed pleading to the contrary can change that.

In the end, it's a relief that it will all be over soon. Contrary to popular belief, Staunton was given his chance.

There is no doubt that he was probably the least warmly-received manager in Irish football history but just about every article written and word spoken about him back in January 2006 came with the very best of wishes attached. Nobody was expecting him to be Mourinho . . . either on or off the pitch . . . but equally nobody was expecting it to get so bad that we'd be sitting here on the end of a 3-6 aggregate scoreline after two matches with Cyprus.

That's what it comes down to. The people who moralise over the booing at Croke Park on Wednesday seem to miss the point of it. Staunton wasn't booed because he failed to get Ireland qualified for Euro 2008, he was booed because this was as close as you can get to concrete evidence in so intangible a world as football that nothing had improved in the year that has passed since Nicosia. This wasn't an equivalent of the backlash that had greeted the rugby team's failure to meet expectation in France; it was a demand that this era be put out of its misery. Decrying the booing as a nation getting notions of itself above its station is an insult to the country's football people, who in all honesty don't expect much more than qualification for every second or third tournament. They always hope for more, of course, but they don't expect it.

Life will go on and we will move on.

Whoever the new man is, you can bet every penny Delaney's ever spent that he'll be someone who's done more than lay out cones at Walsall (have they ever earned a handier 30 grand down at the Bescott Stadium, by the by? ) and it's a fair bet he won't be Irish either. David O'Leary is known to want the job but is reluctant to tout for it in the media. A bit of imagination wouldn't go amiss, nor would some financial muscle.

Whoever comes in, the prospect of a clean slate is one to look forward to.

Keane said much that was disingenuous on Friday night (as well as some things which were outright lies) but there's no getting away from the fact that parts of the media did behave despicably towards Staunton. The Muppet mock-ups on the front pages, the relentless ridiculing of his accent, dim-witted publicity stunts like sending a taxi round to Merrion Square for Staunton . . . these were insults too far. Blaming them for results and poor performances is a big stretch but it still shouldn't be too much to ask that the next man is treated with a bit of decency.

As for Staunton, it would be nice if he was made aware that there is little enough real anger towards him, only sadness really. It would be nice too if, after a time-out, he was to get a break in the game if he wanted it.

For that to happen, he will have to open his mind and realise that there's more to management than the pumped fist and the battle cry. Somewhere along the way, he will have to face up to his limitations, go get his coaching qualifications, learn about systems and such, maybe become versed in sports psychology, embrace the modernisation of the game. At only 38, he has all the time he needs.

Whether or not he has the humility is another matter. One of his more annoying mannerisms was to forever give the impression that he knew more than he was willing to share.

He'd answer a straightforward question about formations with a smirk and the line, "It'll be Shay plus 10 outfield players." We asked him in passing one day how many games he'd been to see at the World Cup and he said simply, "Enough". He'd never explain the thinking behind patently wrong-headed decisions like playing Steve Finnan at left-back and John O'Shea at right-back or Andy Keogh in right midfield or Joey O'Brien in central midfield except to say that good players can play anywhere.

He always liked to give the impression that he knew more about football than the average bear did or could.

Sad to say, but the evidence on the pitch never backed him up on that.