You could even stretch it like he did and claim that he didn’t have a Macedonia either, at least away from home, in a Euros or World Cup qualifier, the way Mick McCarthy and Jason McAteer had a horror show over there back in ’97.

Yeah, he had an Armenia but that was only a Nations League game. And yeah he had a Luxembourg too but that was at home against a country that just finished third in their Euro qualifying group underlining they’re not the minnows of old.

Virtually every Ireland manager has had a howler of a result. Kenny a Luxembourg, McCarthy a Macedonia, Stan a Cyprus, even Jack a Liechtenstein. And almost every Ireland manager has had that sinking feeling like Kenny experienced against Greece in the Aviva last month where everyone else feels and thinks and deep down knows that it’s all over. Hand against the Danes. Jack in Lisbon and Anfield. McCarthy against Switzerland with ‘Keano’ ringing around Lansdowne. Trap when it was 6-1 to the Germans. O’Neill sometime between when it was 5-1 to the Danes and 4-1 to the Welsh.

What Kenny omitted to mention though was all those managers and those that came before them all achieved and experienced something he never did. A National Moment where the whole country held its breath or had it taken away. An I Was There with a Joxer in Stuggart or somewhere else. A We’ll Always Have Paris, like even a Brian Kerr could boast after his team outplayed Henry & Co 0-0 20 years ago.

Go through it, all the way back to the international debut of someone who 50 years later in his last broadcast as an RTÉ analyst proclaimed the talent at Stephen Kenny’s disposal as the worst an Irish manager has had to work with in his lifetime in the game.

The same day Liam Brady first put on the green shirt Don Givens put the ball in the Russian net not once, not twice but three times.

Later in John Giles’ reign as Ireland manager Brady put the ball in the French net, again triggering all of Lansdowne to become one giant mosh pit. So would Frank Stapleton and Michael Robinson a couple of years later on Eoin Hands’ beat. Even the ultimately deflating 1986 World Cup qualifying campaign began with Mickey Walsh blasting one past the imperious Dassaev.

With Jack there’s too many moments to mention, but we’ll pick one that has been doing the rounds on social media again given it was its 30th anniversary last week: The late Alan McLoughlin with that late goal that night that November in Windsor Park.

Mick had Mark Kennedy and Jason McAteer. Kerr had a whole lot of Robbie. Even Stan and Stephen Ireland, sadly national figures of fun for a while, had that goal against Wales in the first match in Croker. Trap had that late goal of St Ledger's against the Italians there, that early goal of Robbie’s in Paris, qualifying for the Euros.

Martin O’Neill, no matter how things soured between him and the public, will always have Shane Long and the Germans. There was a time when Roy could only praise Jon Walters, not bury him, after his two play-off goals against Bosnia sent us to the Euros in 2016 where Robbie Brady would send everyone into delirium.

Even after the zenith that was that night in Lyon, O’Neill and Keane would still have Vienna and Cardiff courtesy of James McClean.

But the hapless Kenny? When was his Vienna, his Cardiff, his Lyon, even his Lansdowne?

It nearly happened for him. On his very first night: Bratislavia and that Euros play-off semi-final when his young team outplayed but didn’t outscore Slovakia. In the Algarve the night Bazuna wounded Ronaldo’s pride but Ronaldo ultimately broke Kenny’s heart.

But it never happened. Although there were moments of joy and promise — Calum Robinson’s double-brace against Luxembourg, the summer evening we drew with Belgium, putting three past Scotland, Idah’s go-ahead goal against the Dutch only last month — they were too fleeting, too insignificant, too few.

It is a shame he was deprived that. Because for a while there he elevated the mood of the football pubic whatever about the nation with how he felt an Irish team could play.

He was entitled to his crack at the gig and been giving some time in it considering the age profile of the players he chose — and he would feel he had — to go with. Even someone as bullet proof as five-time NBA champion coach Greg Popovich with the rookie phenomenon that is Victor Wembanyama now amongst his playing ranks is in his fifth year of routinely losing with the San Antonio Spurs.

Kenny though doesn’t have the kind of credit in the bank that the untouchable Popovich has. When you haven’t even won one big game, it’s inevitable that you don’t.

Instead he’ll have to settle for a farewell less grand than he or any of us would have wanted: New Zealand in a friendly in the Aviva. A stadium that he regularly filled will likely be half-empty.

But then being the definition of an optimist, he’ll probably look at it as being half-full and a chance for his players to show what they’re about.

Let’s hope they take it. It’s one break that he deserves and that they owe him.