Just before storming off to bed in a huff on Wednesday night, I updated my Facebook status. "Diarmuid Doyle", it said, "is fed up of being an heroic loser." Like everybody who had watched Ireland's defeat to France, I was going through my own little emotional post-mortem, trying to figure out precisely what the defeat meant. It was obvious that Ireland deserved more than the ultimately useless draw which has doomed us to a summer envying plodders like New Zealand and Greece as they grace the soccer fields of South Africa. But was it not equally obvious that we should never have reached the point where Thierry Henry's goal carried such momentous significance?

I needed to sleep on it, to get away from the post-match reaction which was entirely predictable. It would range from the wittily ironic, as people tried to put distance between themselves and their disappointment, to hysterical self-pity, lamentations of thievery and carefully plotted conspiracy theories. (I could never have predicted the imbecilic call for a replay from the minister for justice, however). Mostly, though, and this is what I really wanted to get away from, it would involve a patronising, head-patting tribute to the fighting qualities of the Irish players, and to the fans. What great fellows they are; what loyal supporters. If the government had half their gumption, sure we'd be out of recession in no time.

At 46 years old, and a fan of Irish football since I was little, I just couldn't go through another night of heroic loserdom, during which the nation wallowed in its misfortune and found somebody else (in this case Thierry Henry, a Swedish referee and Fifa freemasonry) to blame for its troubles. As it happened, this was pretty much the extent of the reaction on Thursday too, but it's amazing how a good night's sleep can help you cope with the kind of inanities spouted by Dermot Ahern and others. (Ahern's call for a replay, on the basis that young people would otherwise grow up believing that cheating guarantees success, is mindboggling from somebody in Fianna Fáil, where success and cheating have always gone hand in hand.)

Many of the Irish supporters who were raging about Henry's handball are also fans of Manchester United and should therefore be intimately acquainted with the kind of impossibly implausible decisions which are awarded to the so-called bigger teams in football. It happens all the time: rarely does it result in the deluge of dementia we've seen over the last few days (although the English have form, having been done down in similar circumstances by Diego Maradona in 1986). It does raise the question of what this reaction says about our sense of victimhood, our desire to flail aimlessly at easy targets like Henry rather than ask a number of obvious questions such as: why were we in a play-off in the first place when we have it in us to perform as we did on Wednesday? And as we do have it in us to play as well as we did on Wednesday, how did we ever let that game get to extra time?

To ask those questions, seriously, is to come up against the lack of national self-confidence which stunts our development and hinders our success at international level. If somebody doesn't believe he belongs at the top table, he will be happy to eat in the kitchen. In a sporting context, that means coming second, and preparing to come second. It means being ridiculously pleased if some success is achieved and it guarantees a less than rigorous inquiry when things go wrong. It means the kind of "ah, sure it'll do" attitude which has prevailed in the top levels of government for years and which was primarily responsible for throwing away the boom.

I don't mean to be unkind to Giovanni Trapattoni and his players after their performance on Wednesday, but the concerns that arise from their World Cup exit do not centre mainly on one terrible refereeing decision. They have to do with the kind of conservative approach to games like Montenegro at home where the score finished 0-0. They have to do with going ahead against Italy with three minutes to go and failing to win. They have to do with being the better team against France, but failing to take the chances which would have secured victory, long before extra-time and Thierry Henry broke our hearts.

Perhaps it is the case that the players, and their manager, did not realise until Wednesday what they were capable of under such pressure, although I doubt that. In any case, they know now. There can be no outraged excuses the next time.

Just relax and take it easy: Yusuf Islam and the mob

Yusuf Islam was shocked at the reaction of the audience to his concert in the O2 in Dublin last weekend when some people took offence at the inclusion of a 40-minute promotion for his new West End musical. Many booed, others walked out; one person shouted: "Play Peace Train, you f**king bollocks." The singer and his family, who were present, were very upset.

Not half as upset, I'd suggest, as Salman Rushdie when Islam supported a call for the novelist to be murdered in 1989. Responding to the fatwa placed on Rushdie by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini after the publication of The Satanic Verses, Islam suggested he'd like to see him burnt alive. None of this is to support the yobbishness of the 02 audience – merely to suggest that there is a wider context to Islam's hurt.

ddoyle@tribune.ie