Ireland's win not always pretty, but in the end, it was beautiful

I said here on Wednesday morning that if Ireland put in a performance in Lille, they would be Italy, writes Liam Brady

And that’s exactly what happened — even if it did take until five minutes from the end of a memorable night for the team to get a deserved winner.

I always thought that the way the group was panning out meant that the final game would fall kindly for us. Yes, the heavy defeat to Belgium had been worrying from an Irish perspective but when Italian manager Antonio Conte revealed that he was planning to make up to nine changes to his team — he settled for just the eight in the end — I felt it was a real opportunity for the Irish team. Even when they’re at full strength, this Italian side is not particularly strong offensively and, in the context of a game that was essentially meaningless to them, they just didn’t have the quality to beat us.