ANALYSIS: I genuinely do not believe the team could have done any more than they did.

SO MUCH for Giovanni Trapattoni being a lucky manager. We deserved a draw out of that game. I really believe we did, but what’s done is done and now, of course, the odds are stacked against Ireland.

I wouldn’t wave a white flag just yet, though, even if the task is now an enormous one. Enough can be taken from Saturday’s game to give the players some hope.

I don’t know who sorted the French out at half-time, whether it was Raymond Domenech or Thierry Henry, but they were a different team after the break. They started that second half brightly. There was a sense of urgency about them, which was absent for much of the first half. We just struggled to get the ball off them, and as the half wore on we ran out of legs.

But that was hardly surprising, the work-rate in the first half was just extraordinary, from everyone, but especially Glen Whelan and Keith Andrews in midfield and the front two, Robbie Keane and Kevin Doyle. They were often defending inside their own half, sometimes 20 yards inside – it’s not a pretty sight, but it’s hard to criticise that approach, it has worked for Trapattoni so far.

And the point is that if we had pushed up more, if our full-backs had played as far forward as Bacary Sagna and Patrice Evra did for much of the second half, when they were effectively midfielders, if Damien Duff and Liam Lawrence (who did really well) had bombed on in support of Keane and Doyle, I think the French would simply have picked us off and destroyed us.

For all their problems, for all the tension between them and their manager, for all the evident lack of morale at times, they are what they are: players of real quality. They had more nous than us on Saturday; superior technique, greater pace and all-round ability. They just keep the ball better than we do.

We were up against a team packed with Champions League players – only John O’Shea, for us, has that level of experience on a regular basis.

We were a little like a rugby team at times, trying to make ground up the pitch, inch by inch. It was hard work.

At times I thought we looked like one of the better English Championship sides taking on a top four Premier League side in the FA Cup – the game had that feel about it. We closed them down early on, got our tackles in, did everything we had to do against this team; harried and harassed them, gave them no time on the ball, pressured them at every opportunity. It was a fantastic effort. But, ultimately, their technique won out.

It was never going to be possible to maintain that effort for the 90 minutes and, slowly but surely they got to grips with the game as we tired, they soaked up the pressure, then they were in control – with so few touches, too.

Yes, we had a few chances – and the fact that we created them will be used by Trapattoni to convince the players they are, most definitely, capable of scoring in Paris.

But I genuinely do not believe the team could have done any more than they did, and I don’t think we can point to a single player and say he played poorly.

And, again, that’s the point: Trapattoni is consistently getting the very most and the very best he can out of this group of players and while, of course, there was disappointment with the result, you just cannot argue that they left anything behind.

This, needless to say, is where the Andy Reid issue rears its ahead again, but while he would definitely add something to our midfield, and there were times on Saturday you wondered just what his passing ability might have done for us. We would also lose some of the very workrate that can make us so difficult to beat. I suspect Trapattoni, in some respects, believes he is a luxury we can’t afford. I don’t agree with that, at the very least he should be in the squad, but I can understand his thinking.

This is the style of play that he believes is best suited to the players we have and that’s why I don’t think he will change his approach to Wednesday’s game, even though we’re a goal down. It will be more of the same, trying to pressure them into mistakes – and they made plenty of them on Saturday.

The same battling performance, with the same fantastic attitude, might not, of course, be enough, but score first on Wednesday and then we’ll have ourselves a game. And who do you think will feel most under pressure then? I certainly haven’t given up hope, a repeat of that first-half performance, especially, and we’ll give ourselves a chance.