Republic of Ireland 1 Poland 1

At this rate, if Ireland make it to the Euros they'll be the ones sprinting through the airport as the gate closes. For the third time in five Group D games, they clawed their way to a positive result here with the clock already having ticked past 90 minutes. For Aiden McGeady in Tbilisi and John O'Shea in Gelsenkirchen, read Shane Long in the Aviva. Whatever else this team lacks, their reserves of character are bounteous.

In the rich and textured history of Irish 1-1 draws, this sits easily among the classics of the genre. Ireland were absolutely as good as Poland but they gave away a brainless goal midway through the first half and spent the rest of the game chasing after it.

They hit the post twice in the second half and when Séamus Coleman blazed wide seven minutes from time, it looked like their race was run. But Long’s goal in the 93rd minute kept Martin O’Neill’s side with breath in their body.

“The one thing you can never say against this side, they don’t lack spirit,” said O’Neill. “We keep going right to the end. We deserved it tonight, the second-half performance was really fantastic. It would have been a shame if we got nothing out of it. If that game had gone on a little longer, we might have won it.

“I thought we started a bit tentatively. We were a little bit nervous. We gave away a really silly goal but apart from that, Poland didn’t cause us much problem really. We had some chances but the most important stat is to score a goal, no matter what chances we’ve had.

“The second-half performance was simply terrific. We put Poland on the back foot from the 45th minute to the 90th and we totally deserved a point. We stayed with it and the crowd stayed with it and we got the draw. I think we have to beat Scotland now. I think that’s probably fair to say. But on the basis of that second half, I think we have it in us.”

Long's goal came deep into injury-time at the end of a spell of Irish pressure that had been sustained for most of the second half. A Robbie Brady corner beat everyone except Wes Hoolahan at the back post and his feed back into the six-yard box was pounced on by Long. It felt only right that Hoolahan should have a hand in the goal since he was at the heart of everything good Ireland did all night.

But for the longest time, it looked like his toil would be in vain. O'Neill picked an attacking side but the problem when you pick the team the masses want is that there's every chance the masses are wrong. The solid, prosaic choice would have been Richard Keogh alongside John O'Shea in the centre of defence with Marc Wilson at left back. But there were few voices of dissent when the teamsheets appeared with Robbie Brady at left back.

Sad to say, Brady had a shocker. In a game where the midfield couldn’t have been more congested had the players been vacuum-packed, the Hull player struggled time and again to find an out-ball from defence. He rarely managed to get on the front foot to show what he could bring as an attacking option and he wasted most of his dead ball opportunities before that injury-time corner.

All of which would have been a shame but not necessarily a disaster. But then he made the howler which let Poland in for their first goal. To be fair, he was far from the only culprit. Again struggling to find a clearance in the 26th minute, he turned back to pass to Wilson but sold him short.

Still, the Stoke defender needed to do more than be brushed aside by Polish winger Maciej Rybus. And though the ball squirted to Slawomir Peszko only eight yards out, he was on an angle and Shay Given's career wouldn't have been what it was had he spent it getting beaten by shots across his body into the far corner. It was a fine strike from Peszko but untidy from the Ireland goalkeeper all the same.

And it was so very nearly crucial. Poland didn’t have a chance for the rest of the game but since it took Ireland so long to find any intensity or route to goal at the other end, the visitors looked for ages like they wouldn’t need another one.

On the balance of play for the rest of the night, Ireland probably deserved a draw. Right up until the 92nd minute, there seemed little prospect of them getting one. Brady had one cross deflected onto the post and Robbie Keane had a header that caught the bottom of the same upright.

That seemed to be Ireland’s lot, right up until it wasn’t. A 1-1 draw won’t be enough against Scotland in June. But it felt pretty good at the end here last night.