New generation of fans hoping to ride wave of hype all the way to World Cup

A few days after the miracle of Budapest, Wayne Rooney tentatively advanced the idea that Ireland might have over-celebrated following their dramatic late winner against Hungary. "I thought they'd actually qualified," Rooney joked on The Overlap. It was a mark of how out of tune this sentiment was with the Irish football public at the time that Roy Keane - a man who ordinarily might be expected to loudly agree with such a proposition - pushed back on the idea. In the midst of the general euphoria after Hungary, there were some occasional, brief twinges of annoyance that Ireland somehow weren't in the World Cup, still. People wondered how it was that every contentious enlargement of the...