IT took a few days to summon the fortitude to sit through another showing. Try to pick through the bones of Paris and the images must first pass through a filter of outrage. Calm head, warm heart? Impossible.

That little phrase could well come to define the Trapattoni era, four words which sit comfortably in the lexicon alongside the ones that will forever be associated with Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane: "Fail to prepare, prepare to fail''

Giovanni Trapattoni, however, came with no Irish baggage and when he delivers gnomic pearls of wisdom, he does so with five decades of achievement as a manager behind him and no axe to grind. Still, Keane's explosive reaction to the wave of po-faced morality which washed over the nation in the wake of Thierry Henry's sneaky act of cheating was a bucket of cold water at exactly the right time.

Heroic as the performance in Paris was, the game should have been dead and buried by the time Paul McShane hesitated fatally and Shay Given stood rooted to the spot.

But Keane's assessment of a group of players afraid to take the next step was so far wide of the mark. In fact, stepping up to the required level was exactly what Robbie Keane, Richard Dunne, Given and just about every other player were doing while he judged them wanting. The senior players accepted responsibility for their own fate and to a man were prepared to give everything they had, unconditionally, to qualify for South Africa.

Dunne spoke about tuning into the heartbeat of the country when the squad gathered in Portmarnock a few weeks back by embracing the responsibility laid at their door.

It may be unfair to load the cares of a nation shredded by greed and self-interest onto a group of footballers, no matter how well paid they are, but that's what we do in Ireland and, as always, we judge our sportsmen and women against much higher standards than anyone else.

All the players were clear in their understanding of what was at stake and were happy to embrace the idea that there was a lot more than football to fight for. With the lights going out in the Stade de France, they threw their kit into the crowd, some small repayment for the investment the supporters had made.

Roy Keane needed to be there to see that first hand and feel the bond. Fans know what they see and are not easily fooled. The performance was the genuine article and nobody bottled it as he suggested.

Keane added a bit of topspin when he took a swipe at FAI CEO John Delaney, but the two men clearly have major issues to resolve, so it's best to leave them at it.

The last time Keane and Delaney were the hot ticket for breathless primetime newsreaders and reporters the whole country was in a ferment, and when Trapattoni arrived it was with some relief that football fans turned to a manager who didn't have Saipan as a permanent reference burned into his soul.

Old enmities from seven years ago don't really have any place in the current debate, though, it must be said, the description of the Corkman's contribution to the Henry handball firestorm as "sad" caused an instinctive and sharp intake of breath. Oh to be a fly on the wall in the manager's office at Portman Road when that one landed.

But back to the present. Now that the Henry furore has started to dissipate, the scale of Trapattoni's achievement is revealed and the only question to be answered is whether the Irish performance against France in Paris was the precursor to something even better or the natural peak of a cycle.

In the days before the return leg in Paris, it was notable that Robbie Keane and Damien Duff set the tone for the squad, not Trapattoni. They said risks would be taken and we all nodded but didn't quite believe it.

If they did talk among themselves and reach a consensus, which from comments made by players before and after the game appears to be the case, surely this is further evidence that Trapattoni had achieved his aim of wrapping confidence around his players and building their self-belief.

It may well be that the players finally asserted their own talents from within the straitjacket of a rigid system and surprised Trapattoni by outplaying France, but they only did it because he gave them the platform to develop the courage of their football convictions.

Keith Andrews and Glenn Whelan must be enjoying a satisfied chuckle. Derided as no-hopers and incapable of playing in any system, they kept their heads down and did as they were told.

When it came to the moment, the two midfielders must have been at a fine pitch. Sprung by the manager and carrying months and even years of frustration, they epitomised the clever way Trapattoni does his work by playing the games of their lives at a level everyone told them they couldn't cope with.

He is an exceptionally cautious man, is Trapattoni, but he is also a keen student of human nature and he clearly places a great deal of emphasis on mental preparation, priming players with what they need to overcome any feelings of inferiority or inadequacy.

When Trap found this squad, it was at a low, low ebb -- bruised and battered by years of criticism and underachievement. The limits we all saw in Cyprus and San Marino were baffling and not just explained by a novice manager.

But Trapattoni trawled through the names he was given and picked up others along the road, grafting on some hunger to a care-worn bunch of senior players.

Andrews' ability to lead came as a bonus and it's a talent that was recognisable all the way back to his days in Stella Maris.

Whelan, too, has the ability to organise those around him, and if there was one image on that bittersweet night in the Stade de France that summed up the Irish effort, it was the self-effacing Dubliner trotting to the dugout and fixing his replacement Darron Gibson with a glare, finger fixed to his forehead and one word on his lips: concentrate.

Trapattoni is no miracle worker -- just an extraordinarily professional and charismatic individual who through trial and error over many, many years has found a reliable way to successfully motivate and instruct footballers in a system that is proven.

He has been criticised for the way Ireland play, or at least he was up until Paris, and nobody really disagrees with the fact that for long parts of the qualifying campaign Jedward had more to offer in the way of entertainment.

Worse than that, we left Bari and Sofia behind wondering whether we dropped points or gained them and finished the group with some regrets.

Trapattoni is ruthless (Andy Reid) and unnecessarily stubborn (Andy Reid) and as a result, the Irish bench was as light as a Malteser in Croke Park and Paris. Little details preoccupy Trap but sometimes big ones escape him.

He should have opened the door to Lee Carsley, Andy Reid, Steve Finnan and Steven Reid and one of them might have made the difference for 10 minutes, or even one minute.

But he didn't do any of that and still he produced a team, almost like Aidan O'Brien might produce a high-class thouroughbred for a big race, that beat the World Cup runners-up on their own pitch over the regulation 90 and were only bounced out of the World Cup by an act of crass dishonesty, dumb incompetence and/or Sepp Blatter and the Illuminati -- depending on your conspiracy 'Thierry' of choice.

Who knows whether this team will ever reach these heights again or whether Trapattoni can find a few more to make it better, and, yes, it will be to impossible to watch the French walk out on the high veldt without experiencing a strong urge to vomit.

But Trap has given us a hell of a ride and moments we never really thought we would experience again. For that he should be thanked. He earned his loot.

Word is, Trapattoni took the circumstances of the defeat to heart and was deeply upset by events in Paris, his emotions already engaged by the serious illness of a close relative.

He shed tears in the dressing room and again afterwards.

Like the players he too will need time to recover from the gut-wrenching disappointment he must be feeling but like the rest of us he will want to replace it with a positive memory. It seems another universe away, but Euro 2012 already conjures all sorts of wild thoughts.

- Paul Hyland