Tomorrow's game can't come soon enough for the Ireland squad as the Wolves midfielder tries to preach a little caution, writes MARY HANNIGAN

STEPHEN HUNT was doing his best to preach caution, insisting that there was work to be done and that he and the squad were taking nothing for granted.

But every so often he couldn’t help but beam when the prospect of playing in Euro 2012 was raised. And then he’d get a grip, preach caution again, and insist the job still had to be completed. “But…..,” and the smile would reappear.

It’s only a few weeks back that he talked about the difference in how the Irish rugby and football teams are perceived by the public here, conceding that he and his team-mates still had some work to do before they would be regarded with the same affection. Now? Getting there.

“Look, any team in Ireland that does well is going to be extremely popular.

“We have the Olympics coming up and I’m sure everyone will get behind them as well. A major sporting event, Irish fans won’t be lacking. To hear all the songs and stuff like that will be a major lift for everyone, and to be able to go out in this country and look people in the face and say ‘d’you know what, we’ve qualified’ – hopefully – and for people to say we’ve done well, that would be major boost. There’s a buzz already, people turning up at training,” he said. “But we’re not there yet,” he added.

The trip back from Tallinn was, he said, a little surreal. “We had to bring ourselves down, pinch ourselves a little. To be honest with you, everyone was in shock really, I think. But we were just thinking ‘roll on Tuesday’ to get the job done and finish it off well.

“We have to respect them for what they are and how far they’ve come. They’ll be minus three players, it was frustrating for them, so they’ll be angry and upset, their pride will have been hurt, so we have to be on our toes from the start. It’ll be difficult, two games are never the same, two halves are never the same in football, hopefully we’ll be on it.”

There’ll be no champagne football, either. Hunt is never shy to talk about his annoyance at criticism of the team’s style of play, but he simply lays the results that the manager’s style has achieved on the table and asks how anyone could doubt it.

“We have to make sure we finish off, but not ‘in style’, no ‘shackles off’, all that rubbish, just get the job done and win the game. We don’t have to change a thing, it’s got us to where we are now. We’ve lost once in how many games? What are we going to do now? Open up and get beaten 5-0? We’ll play with the same mentality and the same desire to win games, that’ll take us through.”

And Giovanni Trapattoni should be the man to lead you for the next two years, or more? “Yep! How could you say anything else with the record he has? And let’s not forget where we were before he came. The talk about how we play . . . when we used to qualify before, Packie used to grab the ball in his hands and hit it as far as he could. Boot it. We’re a different team, we have smaller players, they were heads above us. So we do play a little bit of football.

“There’s a little myth, a campaign . . . well, maybe not a campaign, everyone has their opinion – we are direct, but we’re not as direct as the teams that qualified for World Cups and European Championships. We’re not Brazil, we’re not going to turn in to a team like Spain, nobody is.

“We are what we are: positive. I really want to have a go at a few people, but I’m going to sit tight because we’ve got a massive game. Winning breeds confidence. We’ve believed in the manager and ourselves as players. We won’t change, we’re set in our ways. Results have been positive, so why change winning habits?”

If – and he puts the word in bold and italics – qualification is secured, Hunt’s target between now and the finals is go up a level or two with his form, just to boost his chances of making that starting 11.

"Six months is an awful long time in football – if we do qualify. I think the manager knows what I'm capable of doing, he believes in me, I speak to him and Marco quite a bit. I've just got to do more to get in the starting line-up on a regular basis, raise the bar with my performances, and that's what I intend doing the next six months. I know I can make an impact as a sub, but it would be nice to be in that starting 11 for the tournament." "Well, ifwe get there," he smiled.