Hungary 0 Rep of Ireland 0:THE TEAM bus that will transport Giovanni Trapattoni around Poland for the next couple of weeks is emblazoned with the slogan "Talk with your feet; Play with your heart," and after their week in Italy the idea was that the Irish would do enough of both here to provide encouragement ahead of the sterner tests to come.
Despite the game being delayed for 20 minutes by the stormy conditions and heavy rain, Trapattoni’s men certainly made a spirited start to what, it quickly became clear, was going to be a lively encounter. In the end they were left with an 11th clean sheet in an unbeaten run that has now been extended to 14 games to point to as the produce of a tough night’s work. Still, unless he specifically wanted to practice such things, the Italian may be a little disappointed with the extent to which they did their talking and showed their heart deep inside their own half.
Riding their luck under pressure has become fairly second nature to this team and there was a fair bit of it here. That Shay Given, Keiren Westwood and, late on, Stephen Hunt, had to make last-gasp stops is one thing but the number of times they were simply let off the hook by their opponents’ poor finishing is quite another. On this front, despite the scoreline, Ireland’s rivals at Euro 2012 will have drawn some encouragement from what they saw here.
There were, on the other hand, some positives for the Irish too. The manager talked about the importance of using his first choice players to work through set-pieces and within seven minutes there was a decent one for Slaven Bilic up in the stand to mull over when Glenn Whelan played a free short to Damien Duff. He pulled back onto his left foot and crossed for John O’Shea who sent a decent header just over.
It seemed like something of a statement of intent from the Irish for whom Kevin Doyle spent a good deal of time roaming in deep positions while Robbie Keane, Duff and Aiden McGeady tended to be at the heart of the team’s more threatening moves.
McGeady and his skipper had angry words after Keane inadvertently blocked the path of his team -mate as he sought to cut inside and between two defenders, but their manager must have been reasonably happy, at least with the way his players were showing attacking intent.
The problem, though, was that even then the locals looked anxious to break forward whenever the chance arose and while they limited their visitors to a snap shot that Keane drove straight at goalkeeper Adam Bogdan and a couple of short crosses that were well cut out, the Irish back four’s defending had a rather more last -ditch look about it at times.
Certainly the two wide men in the three the hosts deployed behind lone striker Adam Szalai proved difficult to contain with both Adam Gyurcso and the especially impressive Balazs Dzsudzsak providing a persistent threat that the Irish full-backs struggled to get to grips with.
Richard Dunne made one outstanding covering challenge early on and Ward a great lunging block just before the break but in between Shay Given was kept busy. He made one really outstanding save and on three more occasions Szalai really should have had his team in front.
As their confidence grew the Hungarians mixed things up quite well, breaking at speed or building more slowly around the edge of the box. Ward, having been caught out once or twice early on ventured forward less often but Gyurcso still gave him a pretty difficult night.
O’Shea stuck to his task but despite the efforts of Ireland’s wide men to drop back and help out he had his difficulties too out with Dzsudzsak simply floating in front of him and either looking to test the Irish goalkeeper from distance or pick out Szalai inside.
The 24-year-old, though, had a wretched night. A St Ledger slip allowed him one great chance which he rushed and Given saved while another, after he had wrong-footed Dunne, prompted Ward to make his block. O’Shea then overcommitted himself badly shortly after the break as Peter Halmosi sought to cross from the left and when the ball did arrive in for the striker, St Ledger’s block prompted calls for a hand ball.
Moments later, it was Westwood who kept him out with a save almost as good as Given’s best.
It was, for all the pressure Ireland had to survive, not entirely one-way traffic and Jonathan Walters, on for Doyle at half-time, forced a decent stop from Bogdan with the Bolton Wanderers goalkeeper presumably happy after events on the last day of the Premier league season, that the Stoke City striker kept his distance.
For the most part, though, Ireland were comfortably second best, particularly in midfield where the visitors again fell foul of being outnumbered in a such a critical area of the pitch. Even in the dying minutes Hungary had their chances. Hunt blocked a low drive by Imre Szabics on the line and in the final attack Krisztian Nemeth fired straight at Westwood.
On the strength of this, they could do worse than add a line about luck to the two already on that bus but the fact is Ireland will clamber aboard it for the first time unbeaten in comfortably more than a year. This group of players will go to Poland confident that it took more than good fortune to assemble a run like that. Maintain it somehow and a place in the quarters would not be such a long-shot after all.
HUNGARY: Bogdan (Bolton); Varga (Debrecen), Korcsmar (Brann), Meszaros (Debrecen), Halmosi (Szombathely); Koman (Monaco), Pinter (Real Zaragoza); Gyurcso (Videoton), Szakaly (Debrecen), Dzsudzsak (Dinamo Moscow); Szalai (Mainz). Subs: Vanczak (Sion) for Pinter (ht), Szabics (Sturm Graz) for Szakaly (66 mins), Kadar (Unattached) for Halmosi (70 mins), Nemeth (Waalwijk) for Szalai (79 mins), Koltai (Gyor) for Gyurcso (87 mins).
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: Given (Aston Villa); O’Shea (Sunderland), Dunne (Aston Villa), St Ledger (Leicester City), Ward (Wolves); Duff (Fulham), Andrews (West Brom), Whelan (Stoke), McGeady (Spartak Moscow); Doyle (Wolves), Keane (LA Galaxy). Subs: Westwood (Sunderland) and Walters (Stoke City) for Given and Doyle (half-time), Cox (West Brom) for Keane (61 mins), Hunt (Wolves) for Duff (63 mins), Gibson (Everton) for Andrews (66 mins), Green (Derby County) for Whelan (85 mins).
Referee: K Hansen (Denmark).
