If the FAI wanted to take some positives from the debacle surrounding ticket allocation for the Scotland game, they can be encouraged that people actually want to watch Ireland play football once again.

Of course, their problems have stemmed from the failure to take care of those who have always wanted to watch Ireland play football but when the euphoria of popularity hits, it's hard to remember those who have always adored you.

In the past few months the FAI has emerged on the scene like a once pimply youth whose acne has cleared up and now finds himself the centre of attention. In those giddy moments, it must be easy to forget the devoted admirer who is now pushed to one side and left clutching some My Bloody Valentine lyrics - or a programme from the Faroe Islands - that is the only memento of their intense and lonely passion.

All around there are signs that the glory days are back, not just for the football team but for the nation. The obsessive search for tickets is part of every great Irish sporting story and as the country prepares to roar again, it is like the last few years have never happened. Ireland is booming, the team is flying and it's easy to forget the sterile days of Trapattoni and the tumbleweed blowing across the Aviva. Soon it may not even be possible to get a ticket for a home Ireland game on matchday.

So many people have decided that a Friday night in Glasgow is the perfect time to rekindle their love affair with the Irish football team that it promises to be one of the great carnivals of Irishness, a spectacular not witnessed since the glory days of mass public drunkenness in Sopot and Poznan.

The FAI attempted to blame the Scottish FA for the problem and indeed they had questions to answer. Unfortunately, one of them wasn't why the Scottish FA hadn't introduced a scheme to ensure that the most loyal Irish fans received tickets for the biggest away game in the campaign. That was the FAI's mistake but by the end of the week they had everything in hand.

Who wasn't soothed when John Delaney took to the airwaves last Thursday to take control of the crisis?

Perhaps the only startling moment was when Delaney announced that it would take the "wisdom of Solomon" to deal with a situation such as this where demand outstripped supply. It was worth considering that in the time of Solomon there was no internet, something which prevented Solomon readily accessing the latest software that could have allowed him to activate a loyalty system for supporters pretty easily.

It was the only jarring moment in a typically commanding performance from a man who is now assuming the same role in Irish public life that FDR had in America when he would reassure the nation with his fireside chats.

Delaney is well placed to become the father of our nation, although a father who, when the time is right, can effortlessly get down on the dancefloor dressed all in black.

This mixture of avuncular paternalism and bullwhip sharpness should have consoled all. Only the most cynical - or those who had expected to get a ticket for Glasgow having been to places like Astana and Tbilisi - would have felt there were questions left for the FAI to answer after his radio appearances last week.

But the fans' group YBIG doggedly met each statement with further questions, confusing each definitive declaration as something that was part of an ongoing debate.

Unfortunately, due to an increased priggishness in Irish public life, Delaney can no longer solve problems with the extravagant sweep that was once his speciality. We are unlikely to see him disembarking from the Flying Scotsman at Glasgow Central next month before marching to the nearest public square and ensuring that every Irish fan is taken care of.

As Emmet Malone reported in The Irish Times, "YBIG has warned that there will be more anger if FAI chief executive John Delaney begins to distribute tickets personally, as he has done in the past, in the run-up to the game."

One cannot but feel we have lost something as a nation when these time-honoured solutions are ruled out before they have even been proposed.

Instead, the FAI will look to appoint a liaison officer, another concession to these joyless times, even if the meeting of Ireland and Scotland will be a reminder that there is more that unites us than separates us, with or without the use of buffer zones. In Scotland, they also dream of a mythical land, not the land of independence which so many desired, but a land of abundant footballers, a land they once lived in.

They, too, believe that the good times are returning, although they are not returning to the Big Rock Candy Mountain they once lived on.

A recent issue of Back Pass magazine published a picture of the Scotland team that beat Zaire 2-0 at the 1974 World Cup and were castigated for doing so. The front row was made up of Denis Law, David Hay, Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer, Sandy Jardine and Kenny Dalglish. One of these men alone would electrify modern Scotland. Not in picture, but in the squad was Jimmy Johnstone, who would have electrified the modern world.

Scotland were eliminated from the tournament without losing a game, something which would cause widespread rejoicing today, but in 1974 became another part of their melancholic story.

In this context, it may be understandable that the Scottish FA held back on releasing tickets to the FAI, believing that their own supporters have enough to worry about in the current climate.

The FAI have their own procedures which, as their statement last week stated, involved giving tickets to "known away supporters". Again we think of the poor fan who somehow found himself among the few hundred Irish in Tbilisi but is now that unregarded thing, an unknown away supporter. Someone who is forgotten in the relentless march of a nation.

dfanning@independent.ie

Sunday Indo Sport