Roberto Lopes’ celebrations were cut short by a scheduled flight home to Dublin.
While the rest of his Cape Verde teammates were celebrating back-to-back African Cup of Nations qualifications, Lopes had other things on his mind.
Two games - against Bohemians and Derry City - and four points later, events of the past fortnight remain a blur for the Shamrock Rovers defender.
“It’s absolutely fantastic. If you’d have told me that at the age of 31 I’d be playing in my second AFCON, I’d hardly have believed you,” said the Dubliner.
“But now that it’s here, it’s probably something that I won’t appreciate now, because obviously I’m still focusing on winning games and wanting to play.
“But afterwards, when I get to look back on it all, just the places I’ve been and the occasions I’ve been lucky enough to play in, it’s unbelievable.
“Hopefully there’s many more. You get the bug, definitely.”
In terms of occasions, there could be many more before he jets off to the Ivory Coast in January for the African Cup of Nations.
Rovers are now seven points clear at the top of the SSE Airtricity Premier Division and are on the cusp of another European adventure.
More on that in a bit. First up, how was his latest international window - one that included a friendly against World Cup bolters Morocco and a qualification clinching win against Burkina Faso?
“It was brilliant,” Lopes replied. “It was fantastic from day one because we had a great friendly lined up against Morocco, who did so well in the World Cup.
“They went full-strength as well, because they had an important qualifier against South Africa.
“I wasn’t expecting to play so much because there were a lot of lads in our squad who needed a game, because their seasons had finished, so I was delighted to come on and play 40 minutes and to see a nil-all draw out.
“That game really set us up and put us on a high for the qualifier against Burkina Faso at home, which was the game we could qualify in.
“A point would have been enough but we got the win in front of our own fans, which was absolutely amazing.
“There was probably a crowd of 2,000 at the game. Funnily enough we don’t get the biggest crowds in the capital, we get the down in the other islands.
“But I think the fact that it was on a Sunday really helped to get the numbers out. It was just brilliant. There was a great feeling all round.”
What about the celebrations afterwards?
“Yeah, it was brilliant,” said Lopes. “Unfortunately I was flying out that night, so I wasn’t able to indulge in everything, but we had a great tour of the city and people met us in various spots.
“We got to celebrate together and a lot of the players’ families were down there, so we got to meet a lot of them as well.
“It was just a really homely feel and a great achievement for the country.
“Back-to-back AFCONs. We set out at the start of this group with that as our goal and we achieved that.
“I think off the back of the last one, we were probably a bit disappointed, we went home a bit earlier than what we would have liked.
“There was the controversy with the food poisoning too, so we really want to get back there and show what we can do over there.
We are just delighted that we have that in the pipeline in January and we can go and enjoy our last qualifier against Togo and look forward to the Ivory Coast in January.”
First up is a historic four-in-a-row bid and an effort to repeat last year’s heroics, when Rovers reached the group stages of the Europa Conference League.
“Yeah, look, there is still a long way to go,” he said of the Hoops’ title bid.
“I think what we do in this group and what we do really well is we treat each game, the next one, as the most important.
“After the two-all draw against Bohs, we knew this was going to be an important game and we needed to get the three points.
“We did that, we put it to bed and it’s onto Dundalk now, that is going to be the next important game.
“I think that is something that we do really well in this group, we don’t look too far ahead, we just focus on the next one.
“I think that’s the way it has to be. Where we are at the end of the year, that’s when we take stock.”
