SOCCER: PLAYERS' REACTION:IN THE end it was all too familiar and the players admitted as much.
The Republic of Ireland 2-0 up and coasting, only to be opened up by the visitors only well-known player, Goran Pandev of Inter Milan, as the whole vibe of the contest changes in an instant.
Football is as much in the mind as on the pitch. Two-one became a noose around the teams’ neck as they inexplicably sought to gnaw away at the clock from 25 minutes out. It meant that rookie goalkeeper Keiren Westwood was required to deny Ivan Trichkovski the equaliser on 76 minutes.
Robbie Keane conceded this was just the way it has always been for Ireland. Maybe it is a reflection of the country in general, in that we just can’t do things by the direct route.
“When you look at the games over the years, it is every qualifier. Not just us now under Trapattoni. Mick and Jack Charlton, eh, Brian Kerr, we never ever made it easy for ourselves,” said Keane.
“You know, that is something that we just have to learn. In football the most important thing is the result.”
Will we ever learn though? The rare shots on target glanced off the slippery paws of Edin Nuredinoski, one leading to Aiden McGeady’s maiden goal at international level and then Keane’s predatory instincts delivered the second.
A doubly frustrated taxi man, at one of the few legitimate ranks around Lansdowne Road afterwards, said his hair went a little greyer listening on the radio to what followed (he preceded to wail about deregulation for the rest of the journey home).
But there were other incidents for Keane to mull over. The joke doing the rounds was that Shane Long was patched up and returned so quickly after Boban Grncharov’s atrocious studs-to-head foul because of all the ash scalps picked up during a childhood playing hurling in Tipperary.
The referee, Istvan Vad, failed in his duties by keeping the red card in his pocket.
“There is no question,” Keane agreed. ”Shane’s ear is nearly hanging off. It looks like when Tyson bit yer man in the boxing. It was a terrible tackle and the referee was only 10 yards away from it so I can’t understand how he didn’t see it. It was a horrific tackle. Lucky enough he is okay but that could have caused him serious damage.”
It certainly made Long angry and affected his game afterwards. The other frustrating aspect of the night was Richard Dunne’s yellow card for lumping into Pandev as it rules the Irish defensive rock out of what will be a crucial away fixture in Macedonia in June.
Keane believed it was inevitable. He also requested it does not become the centrepiece of our post-game reaction piece so we have buried the most interesting comments uttered by the Irish captain. “We were talking about this before the game during the pre-match meal. The chances of a defender getting two yellow cards is 100 per cent going to happen. They have to change that rule. I don’t want to go on about it and I don’t want this to be the headlines tomorrow. We were just chatting about it. Two yellow cards, it’s a given that a defender is going to get them.”
One more issue. James McCarthy. With the allegiance question finally over, attentions will now switch to him becoming a national hero. We don’t do it by half around these parts.
“I was speaking to him before the game and I said ‘I bet you can’t wait just to get this over with’ and stop people from talking about it – and maybe his manager,” said Keane
“He was desperate to play and there was never any question – and I spoke to people in the last couple of months that James knows very well – that he was going to turn his back. His family is all Irish.”
Either Keane or Damien Duff are probably the last teenagers to generate this amount of attention on arrival into the Irish squad. Was his ability evident in training? “It’s very hard to tell exactly when you have so many bodies, something like 26 players, in training but I have seen him at Wigan and he has been immense this season. He has certainly been one of their best players. He had an unfortunate injury but he looks strong. Even physically he looks a lot stronger and that will only help him in the long run,” added Keane.
