Tortuous but somehow ultimately triumphant. As drained as I've felt watching a Motherwell game for some time.
And all looking so good too. We had a shaky moment or two in the first half, the free-header immediately springs to mind, but two up and a couple off the line it seemed like we were well on the way.
And suddenly....
It wasn't actually that much of a surprise that Coleraine did get a penalty as they seemed to go out of their way to claim for absolutely anything and everything inside the box throughout the game, the vast majority blatantly chancing it. And they were none too shy in trying to create a picture for the referee.
I don't know if there's any better angles of the incident emerged than the brief view we had of the first but from the snippet it seemed Carson was comfortably claiming the ball before a few seconds there was the coming together. First reaction was the going down of the Coleraine player and claiming for a penalty was in keeping with their previous attempts to win one, and if O'Hara did foul him when Carson had it under control it was incredibly stupid,
We then had a horrible 15 minutes or so before the change of shape seemed to restore some order of a sort but we never at any time regained control of the game in the way we had in the first half so were always vulnerable. We rode our luck with the disallowed goal and just when it seemed we'd done enough another penalty and red-card to boot. Again another questionable decision.
At that point it looked grim but I would at that stage, for all the performance was had been largely abysmal in the second half, have to give them credit for re-grouping in extra-time. How much of that was down to Coleraine tiring I don't know but down to 10 men, the substitutions having largely destroyed the midfield and the home side having the momentum I thought - again riding our luck once again with the one off the line aside - we did pretty well in extra-time. I might also have expected Long to do better with his chance in the first half of extra-time.
And so to penalties. I think most of us will have thought us doomed when it got to that stage. Memories of several lost shoot-outs, Carson having already been beaten twice, their win against Maribor. It just seemed set up for disaster. But there you go, what a shoot-out from Carson and we're through.
I've seen us go out in Europe in unfortunate circumstances and plenty of what might have beens so I'm not going to get too hung up on fortune being with us last night to see us through.
The performances of many, and collectively for a fair chunk of the game is a different matter entirely.