Darren Randolph readily accepts that the job is only half done but the West Ham goalkeeper believes that Ireland will take more than just the advantage an away goal gives them into Monday's European Championship play-off second leg against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“We’ve played them, now,” says the 28 year-old in the wake of Friday night’s 1-1 draw in Zenica. “We know, or we feel like we know what they’re about now. You still have to work very hard to stop them with the quality that they have but hopefully we’ll be able to do that on Monday.
“We always knew that it was over two games; not to go gung-ho, all out in the first one. So as long as we could keep their shape we were reasonably happy to let them have the ball, as long as they weren’t hurting us too much, which they didn’t. They had a lot of possession but I think the boys dealt with everything brilliantly. We coped well with what they had.
“The team worked tremendously hard,” continued the Wicklowman who has the air of a man who is enjoying his big breakthrough at international level. “Obviously they had to given how much possession the Bosnians had; they defended really well, put in a hell of a shift.
“But we always said before we came here: ‘let’s keep ourselves in the tie for the second leg,’ and we’ve done that.”
Randolph admits that he thought the game might have to be called off at one stage with visibility inside the Bilino Polje stadium deteriorating through the second half to the point where the goalkeeper could not see what was happening towards the far end of the pitch.
“Once it was down the other end I couldn’t see what was happening. I couldn’t see. It’s the first time I’ve experienced that.
The whole thing was a little reminiscent of the old story about Sam Bartram, the long-time Charlton Athletic and wartime England goalkeeper who recalled in his biography the time that he was playing against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and fog descended on the game.
Gradually, the match faded from view but Bartram stayed put, he said, peering through the mist, poised to react to any danger. After a while, the ground went silent but Bartram remained focussed until, some 15 minutes later a lone figure emerged from the fog; it was a policeman who, having reacted with surprise to seeing Bartram standing there, informed him that the game had been abandoned 15 minutes earlier and all the other players had departed..
Things never got quite to that point in Zenica but Randolph admits that for a while he thought the game night have to be abandoned. “It crossed my mind as the game went on,” he says, “but then I thought we’d gone that far that there wasn’t really any chance of it happening.
“I haven’t seen the goal,” he continues. “I don’t even know what happened so I’ll have to look at it back on the telly.”
The conditions, he insisted, were not a concern for him, in any case, as he could see play approaching in plenty of time to prepare himself for action. In the end, though, he had only one save to make really and he made it well, sprinting off his line to close down Senad Lulic after the winger was put clean through when Jeff Hendrick’s attempted clearance clattered off Edin Dzeko and into the path of the Lazio star.
“I don’t really remember what happened,” he says, “but I remember somebody trying to clear it and it ricocheting through. Luckily I was already on the way out to the ball and I got the block in.”
The save helped to ensure that Ireland head into the return game with a slender but potentially decisive advantage and Randolph reckons the approach will be slightly changed back at home.
“I don’t think we can go into the game looking to hold on to the away goal,” he says. “We won’t throw everyone forward and leave ourselves open but we definitely won’t sit back and protect the away goal.”
