Lost chance, but Long lifts gloom

What a difference a year makes. November 18, 2009: it’s Ireland v France in front of a capacity crowd in Paris, playing for a place in the finals of the World Cup and giving birth to a global controversy eclipsed only by Saipan in the annals of Irish football infamy.

November 17, 2010: it’s Ireland v Norway in front of a half-full Aviva Stadium, playing a friendly game which you can be sure will last much longer in the record books than in folk memory. For the record, the official attendance figure was given as 30,068, the smallest yet at the Aviva and smaller than the crowd which attended the FAI Cup Final last Sunday.

Despite an excellent winning goal, Norway were fortunate to win a game dominated for long periods by the home side.

However, adding to the prevailing sense of disappointment was the fact that the loyal crowd which did bother to show up on a cold, wet night, never got a chance to see the hottest prospect in Irish football, Giovanni Trapattoni deciding for his own enigmatic reasons that Everton’s Seamus Coleman was just going to have to sit it out with the rest of us. The added pity is that the absence of one young man will garner as many if not more headlines than the invigorating presence of another, Reading’s Shane Long with a man of the match performance.

But the significance of this game lay in what could have made it different, beginning with Keith Fahey’s first chance to impress at international level in a central role. A few of the Dubliner’s passes might have been intercepted but, despite having to adhere to a deep-lying role, a spectacular 16th minute volley from distance proved that the man who scored the vital winner in Armenia can carry a goal threat from the middle of the park. And with Fahey seeing plenty of the ball – and his partner Glenn Whelan excelling throughout – it was striking how well the Irish retained possession for long spells in the game.

However, it was an old boy who made the first big impression, and that after just four minutes, when John O’Shea’s adventurous run and astute through ball prompted Brede Hangeland to bring down Long and concede a penalty. The Reading man confidently beat goalkeeper Jon Knudsen low to his right.

Long was heavily involved in much of Ireland’s refreshingly fluent play in the opening phase, helping to set in motion a fine move involving Kevin Doyle and Liam Lawrence which ended with Knudsen having to make a desperate goal-line save with his feet to deny Damien Duff. Indeed, such was the growing confidence of the home side’s play that Glenn Whelan felt sufficiently emboldened to attempt to breach the Norwegian defence from almost the halfway line.

The long throws of John Arne Riise seemed to be the visitors’ main hope of troubling a patched-up Irish defence but, for the first 30 minutes Shay Given remained almost as inactive as he has been for his club recently.

There was little he could do about Norway’s bolt from the blue equaliser just past the half-hour mark, a superb free-kick from the gifted left-foot of Blackburn’s Morten Gamst Pedersen.

However, the captain and the man who was winning a record-breaking 109th cap for his country, was in the right place at the right time to, first, save from Eric Huseklepp and then thwart a long-ranger from Riise.

Long again led the Irish charge from the resumption, substitute Aiden McGeady’s fresh pace setting up a powerful shot which sub keeper Pettersen did well to turn away one-handed. And a fine piece of opportunism almost saw the Reading man grab a second goal, as he nipped in ahead of Kjetil Waehler to get to a headed flick-on from Doyle’s replacement Jon Walters, only for Pettersen to again make the save. With full-back Greg Cunningham impressive in getting forward in support of Duff and not afraid to make his own darting runs, Ireland continued to press on both flanks, but Given had to be alert to clear the danger when Norway suddenly turned defence into attack with a routine long ball.

Minutes after Walters had come close to turning McGeady’s cross-cum-shot into the net, Coleman’s chances of getting his first cap were extinguished as the manager chose instead to give Kevin Foley a rare tour of duty in the green shirt.

There was still much to admire about Ireland’s performance – including an authoritative 90 minutes from Whelan and a typically energetic cameo to mark the return of Stephen Hunt – but the winning Irish goal which might have made up for the absence of Coleman never came.

Instead, Norway delivered the classic sucker punch via a sweeping counter-attack which finished with Erik Huseklepp finding the back of the net from a tight angle to rub liberal quantities of salt into Irish wounds.

Subs for Rep of Ireland: Foley for O’Dea 57, McGeady for Lawrence 45, Hunt for Duff 73, Walters for Doyle 45.

Subs for Norway: Pettersen for Knudsen 45, Jenssen for Grindheim 54, Haestad for Moen 77, BH Riise for Helstad 45, Moldskred for Huseklepp 90.