This column is being written as the rescue process to save the Chilean miners enters its final stages. Watching the live feed, it is heartening to consider the fact that these men will be brought to safety, back above ground where their waiting families will no doubt welcome them with open arms (although the miner who allegedly has a welcoming party of a wife and a girlfriend will have some explaining to do. Perhaps he will attempt to wait until last before leaving the mine!).

What the rescue effort shows is that in the gravest of situations there is always hope. These men could have very easily been given up as a lost cause, another statistic in the dark history of mining. Instead the Chileans reacted with defiance, and put in place a strategy that looks very much as if it will bear fruit.

We in this country could take note of what has been going on in Chile. A striking sense of stoicism never did anyone any harm, and an ability to think for oneself was never a disadvantage. Yet Irish society today seems to believe otherwise.

As the Celtic Tiger began to regress, turning into a meek defenceless kitten, there seemed an overt sense of determination among the Irish people to play the blame game. Joe Duffy had a field day with a constant barrage of phone calls from listeners who seemed to plant every ailment in their lives at somebody else's door. Nobody wanted to take responsibility.

Mistakes were of course made by those at the top, such as the Government, bank officials and property developers. In many cases greed took over from common sense and led to an inflated sense of our country's financial worth. It wasn't long before we went from boom to bust (for those of you who want an economics lecture you can switch channels, Mr McWilliams will no doubt be prognosticating at a web site near you shortly).

Among those callers to Joe Duffy, nobody seems to be accepting that they may have got a little carried away by borrowing massively for that second house in Bulgaria, or the two new cars that looked so well in the front drive. Not many would have been enamoured if Charlie McCreevey or Brian Cowen had sought to throw some cold water on the boiling property market – sure why should they be allowed to stop the fun that people were having in this crazy new game of property speculation?

The fact that much of what went on in the Celtic Tiger was built on bullshit seemed to pass people by until it was too late (or perhaps they were just too afraid to acknowledge that the Tiger was really a pussy with some long claws).

And so we transport all this to last Friday night and the new Lansdowne Road, where the Republic of Ireland was doing battle with the mighty Russians. The visitors had plenty of support with them who created quite a racket for a large portion of the match. To be fair, the Irish fans also played their part, illustrating what the new stadium can create under the right conditions.

Of course, we are now familiar with what occurred over the ninety minutes, as Dick Advocaat's charges controlled at least an hour of proceedings. They made the Irish men look like boys, playing with a fluidity and simplicity that belied their astonishing reversal at home to Slovakia a month earlier.

Yet, there seemed not an iota of credence among many of the fans that such a reversal for Ireland as took place last Friday was possible. Perhaps because only a few of the Russians were known to the average Irish fan were they given more than a 50/50 chance of winning. Little seemed to be known about the quiet revolution that is taking place in Russian soccer at the moment, how this proud nation is threatening, once again, to challenge the best on the international football stage.

There was a noticeable cacophony of boos at half-time as Ireland went in two goals down. Shortly after the resumption a third was added, greeted by the sight of many fans leaving their seats with forty minutes of the contest remaining. This writer saw for himself plenty of “supporters” heading off from the North Stand just after the third goal went in - they had given up the fight.

Were those fair-weather fans in charge of the rescue bid in Chile it is a fair bet that we would be dealing with thirty-three dead men. Such a lack of backbone that was displayed last Friday by many fans was just a mirror image of how many people have been behaving since the Celtic Tiger fell away. They were the Joe Duffy “Whine line” crowd, quick to complain, but slow to add anything as meaningful as a suggestion to get us out of this mess.

Those fans that left early were a far cry from the thousands who travelled to Paris last November for that make-or-break World Cup qualifier. It was a pleasure to be among the thousands in the Stade de France that night, laden with positivity and the hope (that most precious of commodities), that we might just do it against the French. How gloriously close we came to so doing.

It would have been poetic justice for those early leavers if Ireland had managed to grab an equaliser in those frenetic final minutes last Friday. What those “fans” did miss was a stadium that dared to hope, creating an atmosphere that at times equalled, and indeed surpassed, the old Lansdowne Road. For those final twenty minutes the stadium was occupied by the kind of people that this country needs – those who dare to hope.

I wonder what the fair-weather fans made of it as they heard the ground shake twice in their absence when Ireland grabbed two late goals – surely there must have been a pang of regret at their decision to leave early, unable to countenance “wasting” 40 minutes of their lives on supporting their country when it needed them most. They felt a sense of entitlement to be entertained, to see an Irish team beat these pesky Russians in our spanking new stadium. When they realised that real life wasn't like that, they couldn't hack it and left, muttering dark nothings to themselves in the process.

Not the kind of people our nation needs now in the current climate – perhaps they can ring Joe to complain about the temerity of two goals being scored in their absence and demand a refund.

In today's supercilious times, it wouldn't surprise me...