The net is cast so wide these days that numbers are inevitably small but, as recent research has shown, few places punch above their weight quite like Derry just now when it comes to producing Premier League players and Martin O’Neill will be hoping that Shane Duffy adds another to the list for next season by helping Brighton up.
Duffy could do with the experience of playing at the highest level week in, week out and O’Neill could certainly do with having a central defender of his type who is capable of coping at that level. The Ireland manager has decided not to wait around, though, which is understandable but once again on Sunday night there was worrying evidence that there can be price to pay for thrusting responsibility on the 24 year-old.
The former Everton defender was not, as the manager repeatedly pointed out afterwards, the only member of the cast at fault for the team’s “dunderhead moment”, as O’Neill described it, but he certainly played a leading role.
Through the first half on Thursday, it had been good to see the least experienced of Ireland’s back four urging the players around and in front of him forward so as to exert more pressure on Georgians who were being allowed to have things pretty much all their own way.
Here, though, he and his team mates got carried away and at times played a dangerously high line against a Moldovan side that had looked eager from early on to play ball into space behind them. That in itself need not have been fatal but to pull it off, a team needs defenders who are alert to imminent imminent threats and, ideally, pretty quick on their feet when one arises. Duffy did not look like he ticked either box during the quick fire build up to Igor Bugaev’s equalising goal.
Following on from the difficult time that he endured against France at the Euros it raised more questions about his ability to impose himself at this level. The only real consolation here was that he didn’t lunge at his opponent from behind the way he had on Antoine Griezmann in Lyon and leave Ireland down to 10 men again. But after looking composed early on, it was not his only mistake either and he might consider himself slightly lucky that none of the others led to anything of any real consequence.
Prominent amongst his problems, of course, is simply that he remains inexperienced. It is more than six years since Giovanni Trapattoni first decided to bring him over and have a closer look at him at an end of season training camp which, freakishly, ended with the then teenager having to undergo emergency surgery and he will turn 25 this coming new year’s day. But he has played just 120 or so club games in the seasons since and only a handful of those have been in the Premier League.
John O’Shea, the man Duffy might be seen as replacing in this Ireland team, is 10 years older and had made around 130 top flight appearances for Manchester United by much the same point in his career, not to mention 50 or so in Europe.
Given his obvious talent, strong personality and physical attributes, Duffy’s lack of top level experience by comparison, can be taken as further evidence of the challenges facing young Irish players heading to England. He seemed to be well thought of at Everton at various times but never, it seemed, quite enough to actually get the game time he needed to grow as a player. Now, it is clear that he still getting to grips with things in his mid twenties and his slightly bizarre series of mistakes over the first couple of weeks of this season at Blackburn may well have prevented a manager from the lower half of the Premier League taking a chance on him.
He will, it seems certain, get better, and Brighton might actually be the best place for him to be right now but as things stand he clearly has the potential to cost Ireland points against this group’s better teams, and sticking with him in Vienna remains a gamble even if O’Neill views the alternatives as making it one worth taking.
Robbie Brady’s absence, of course, didn’t do Duffy any favours in Chisinau and O’Neill is sure to take that into account too as he weighs things up in advance of Vienna.
Against the Netherlands, the scale of the attacking threat that the big centre half can pose from frees and corners became obvious and the quality of Brady’s delivery is key to getting the best out this side of him on that front. Certainly Ireland were disappointing in this area on Sunday and Duffy all but disappeared on the few occasions he looked to get on the end of something.
With Austria having conceded five goals in its two games against sides seen as serious qualification rivals and Brady likely to return, that attacking threat will be seen as a major point in Duffy’s favour and the manager might hope in the meantime that he has learned from what happened in Chisinau but O’Neill’s opposite number, Marcel Koller, will surely see him as a potential weakness too.
On this occasion, Duffy was spared more serious finger pointing by another Derryman, James McClean, whose two second half goals made the slip up before the break largely irrelevant. He won’t always be so lucky and, for Ireland’s sake, he needs to grow into the role fast.
