Ireland are prisoners of the past and that is a big part of the problem
Imagine if the same thing went on in other sports. Imagine if all the talk before a Meath game in 2024 was of the team of 36 years ago with Mick Lyons, Joe Cassells and Brian Stafford.
We don't know for definite how Heimir Hallgrímsson was feeling that day. Maybe he was shaking off the last of the hangover from his 21st two days earlier.
Maybe he doesn't drink at all - we know very little about the man who now manages Ireland. We do know that he was studying computer science at the time, but getting restless. Deep down, Hallgrímsson knew it wasn't for him. He was thinking of making a radical change, of switching to dentistry.
There was always football as a distraction. He'd been playing adult football for two years with his local team, Vestmannaeyjar. Did his interest in football mean he watched Ireland beat England on June 12, 1988?
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Who knows? What we can guess is that he might well be bewildered by the focus in this country on that time.
There is a song that used to be taught in schools about the doomed rising of 1798 - 'who dares to speak of '98?'
Unfortunately, nearly everyone - it sometimes seems - dares to speak of '88.
Imagine if the same thing went on in other sports. Imagine if all the talk before a Meath game in 2024 was of the team of 36 years ago with Mick Lyons, Joe Cassells and Brian Stafford.
Picture a scenario in the RTE studio during the recent Olympics. Would we not be bewildered if, in previewing Daniel Wiffen in the pool, what happened to Gary O'Toole, Richard Gheel and Stephen Cullen at Seoul '88 was referenced?
But the build-up to Saturday at the Aviva continually namechecked Stuttgart in '88 and the Jack Charlton era. Of course you can argue that this was understandable as it was Ireland's only competitive win over England.
This happens again and again, though. Not just for games with England. Before home games, the PA blasts out 'Put 'Em Under Pressure'. Thousands of fans join in, singing 'we're all part of Jackie's Army'.
Jack Charlton passed away in 2020. His last game as Ireland manager was in 1995. Ireland are on their eighth manager since he left the job.
Ireland captain Seamus Coleman, at 35, is comfortably the oldest player in Hallgrímsson's squad. He wasn't born when Ray Houghton put the ball in the English net.
Evan Ferguson is the great white hope of Irish football. He wasn't born until nine years after Charlton's last game.
Here's something else to ponder. Stuttgart was 36 years ago. Imagine if the build-up to that game inluded plenty of references to games 36 years earlier in the early 1950s.
That Declan Rice and Jack Grealish were the England goalscorers on Saturday should hammer home the message that the past is a different country, one that we will never return to.
Now England will let no serious talent slip through the cracks, not even ones that have already played for a different country.
The most important goal in Charlton's first qualifying campaign was scored by Mark Lawrenson, then one of the best central defenders in Europe.
England's meticulous system means a 2024 Lawrenson would never escape, even if he was in the lower divisions, as the man himself was when first capped.
During his commentary on RTE, Darragh Maloney described the way that England had completely outclassed Ireland as a reality check.
We have to differ with Maloney on this one. The reality checks were defeats to the likes of Luxembourg and Armenia. The reality check is the list of Ireland results since Euro 2016. It makes for exceptionally grim reading.
England were without the likes of Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer on Saturday. Harvey Elliott and Marcus Rashford play regularly for Liverpool and Manchester United - they don't even make England's squad.
England have 10 times Ireland's population, one of the strongest professional leagues in the world, and an academy system that produces quality players year after year.
Ireland's measure now isn't games against England - ranked fourth in the world, and with merit. It may not even be games against their next opponents, Greece, who crushed Finland 3-0 on Saturday.
Hallgrímsson left the manager's post with Jamaica to take the Ireland job. Ireland are ranked one place ahead of Jamaica in the FIFA rankings. Hallgrímsson stayed at what is his level. And Ireland's level for a long time has been as also-rans.
In the match programme, FAI President Paul Cooke made a very public plea for more government funding for soccer. The scale of funding needed to significantly improve the game here is huge, and it will take time.
Those are the kind of caveats that governments don't like. Sure, we can point to an impressive Under-21 team under Jim Crawford, but there are precious few more chinks of light in the fog where Ireland have flailed around blindly for years.
Hallgrímsson has more Premier League players to work with than you might have expected, but three of those are with Ipswich Town. Anyone expect them to stay up?
His best player on Saturday is with a big club but Caoimhin Kelleher will be feeding off scraps at Liverpool again.
There is a pattern here that's a familiar one. No matter who the manager, no matter the nature of the debates around style and culture, the song remains the same.
The Ireland squad is a refuge for professional football's unlikely lads. Sure, there were times when players from Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal hoovered up caps but, really, they were an anomaly. And those days will never return, not in the globalised game.
Take the long view and Ireland managers poke around in the bargain bins, not in the designer stores.
And it's been that way under manager after manager. Hallgrímsson was spotted on camera shaking his head at different times during Saturday's game. Those are images of him we may well see again and again.
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