The players, like the media who had waited for them long after the last of the singing Irish supporters had headed hurriedly for Amsterdam's bustling city centre, could hardly take it in.

"If you'd told us beforehand that we'd get the draw we'd have been delighted," they repeated one after the other, clearly finding it hard to see the bright side. We, of course, couldn't have told them beforehand because we, for the most part, had expected the Irish team to lose and now we were, like them, only getting used to the fact that they hadn't won.

The locals were in the same boat. While the Irish were going home disappointed with a point Frank de Boer was telling the Dutch press of how the home side had "underestimated the Irish. We expected them to play kick and rush and so our plan was to sit back, let them come at us and then get the ball forward quickly to our wide players. But they didn't do what we had expected, they played well and so we found it very hard to cope." That's the sort of night it was. The sort that will be hard to forget.

For Richard Dunne more than most. The young Dubliner had been almost as concerned as the rest of us about the prospect of him coming face to face with Patrick Kluivert. As it turned out, though, the Barcelona star was made to look second best by a 20-year-old who, until last week, felt more than a little unwanted by his Goodison Park club.

The Irishman's approach wasn't always the most sophisticated and he admitted afterwards that he and Gary Breen had decided to go out and get stuck in "to try and ruffle them a bit". But one of Europe's best strikers had been kept pretty quiet and as he chatted about the game afterwards his obvious relief that things had gone well was mixed with an entirely justified hint of pride.

"It's strange," he sighed, "when we got into the dressing-room the staff were all delighted while the players were drained after all the running and disappointed that we'd let them score two goals.

"Now, I think people are beginning to come around to the fact that 2-2 in Amsterdam is a good result. Personally, I know I can't say that I'm disappointed to be coming away from this place with a point."

It was a fairly common sentiment with only the order of the goals taking the shine off a result that just about any side visiting the home of Dutch football would have been happy with. While Kevin Kilbane agreed with the bulk of his team-mates, however, the Sunderland winger was clearly having trouble convincing himself that he shouldn't shoulder a good deal of the responsibility for such a strong position having been allowed to slip away.

"We all feel a little bit gutted after being two up and having played well and I'm very disappointed with myself for not making it 3-1 just after they'd scored.

"To be honest I don't even know how I ended up with the ball, I just seemed to be by myself all of a sudden and maybe I should have tried to knock it over the goalkeeper but instead I went to slot it and just put it wide of the post."

Of course, those who had hit the target were in more buoyant form with Robbie Keane describing his close range header as "one of the best" goals that he has scored. "It was a great move, we seemed to have the ball for two or three minutes," said the recently signed Inter Milan man, "but I thought I was going to miss the header, in the end I just managed to hang in the air long enough."

And Jason McAteer, after a week in which two of his closest friends were thrown out of the squad and most of the pundits had insisted that he should be omitted from McCarthy's side, had plenty to be pleased about.

Sure enough, his troubles with the press appeared to be firmly behind him as one reporter asked the 29-year-old whether the shot he had scored from had been struck from 40 yards. Beaming, he replied: "I thought it was 45 myself but we won't fall out over five yards."

Then there was Roy Keane. A man to whom winning in places like the Amsterdam Arena comes more naturally than most. Like most of the rest, the Corkman made a point of saying that 2-2 was, when all was said and done, a good result but, he added firmly "we have to start giving ourselves a bit more credit. We have good players and you get a bit sick and tired of the whole `well, the Irish have a good time no matter what the result' stuff.

"Sure the fans will be happy with tonight and rightly so, I suppose, but we do have to raise the targets a bit. We haven't qualified for a major finals since 1994 and if we're going to this time we have to start winning matches. Tonight we should have shut up shop but now we have to use the draw as something to set us up for the next easy game in Portugal."