It’s all come down to 90 minutes
And the Republic of Ireland are 90 minutes away from failure to qualify for the World Cup finals.
As many suspected right from the outset of this campaign, it has all come down to the game against Switzerland at Lansdowne Road on Wednesday night. And Ireland will have to beat the Swiss without the help of Roy Keane and, now, Damien Duff.
Duff yesterday had a scan on the knee injury he sustained in Saturday night’s tense victory over Cyprus, and which saw him still limping heavily on arrival back in Dublin. Last night, manager Brian Kerr confirmed the unwelcome but hardly surprising news that the Chelsea man was definitely out of the game on Wednesday.
Said Kerr: “The scan revealed knee cartilage damage which will certainly keep him out of the game against Switzerland. He has returned to Chelsea for further assessment and treatment.”
Stephen Carr had a scan on a knee which proved to be clear and he is expected to be fit and ready for training today, while Kevin Kilbane is feeling the effects of a dead leg.
All other players are fit for Wednesday’s game, including Gary Breen, back after injury, and Clinton Morrison and Andy Reid who have rejoined the squad following suspension.
Brian Kerr, pleased with the result but unhappy with the performance against Cyprus, must now plot Switzerland’s downfall with a team missing two of its biggest players.
“Following last night’s results the situation is very clear,” he said, “we need to win on Wednesday and if we win there is no doubt we will at least reach the playoffs.
“I am confident that if the players play to their full potential, and with the kind of support we have had in recent games and the full backing of all those with the interests of Irish football at heart, we can achieve the required result“.
It needn’t have come to this, of course. It has been a disfiguring characteristic of Ireland’s Group 4 campaign that Kerr’s team have three times failed to push on from a position of strength, surrendering early one-goal leads in Tel Aviv and Basel and, in a bizarre game at Lansdowne Road, squandering a terrific two-goal advantage against Israel.
One of the few positives which can be taken from Saturday night’s game in Nicosia is that Ireland broke with that unhappy tradition - but only after risking a repeat performance for nearly 85 of the 90 minutes. And for most of the first half, they took the concept of failing to capitalise to new depths, with a display of such staggering ineptitude that, by half-time, they were lucky to have retained even a shred of dignity, never mind a one-goal lead or dreams of World Cup qualification.
Almost from the very moment that Stephen Elliot gave Ireland the lead with a real poacher’s goal, chaos reigned. Across midfield, no one seemed able to get a foot on the ball; when they did, possession was invariably given away. Barely a tackle of consequence was made, and the much more aggressive and committed Cypriots were first to every loose ball.
With each new Cypriot attack - and there were waves of them - the Irish back line quaked under high, diagonal balls or was left flatfooted by the fast, skilful interplay of Constantinou and Okkas.
Ireland were rudderless, plainly riddled with nerves and indecision, playing like a bunch of isolated individuals rather than a team. That Cyprus didn’t score was down principally to Shay Given who, not for the first time, bailed out his team-mates with a series of top-class saves, including a brilliant stop from Okkas’ penalty.
At the other end, Stephen Elliott was also blameless, and not just because of his clinical, opportunistic finish. Clever with his use of the ball and working exceptionally hard to chase lost causes and close down the full-backs, he played with a desire, energy and know-how that seemed wholly alien to his more experienced team mates.
Having picked a starting 11 which appeared eminently capable of dominating in Cyprus, Kerr’s half-time changes acknowledged that the situation couldn’t be allowed to continue as it was. Matt Holland immediately brought a semblance of organisation and responsibility to the midfield and, with the whole side playing higher up and, at last, getting tight on the opposition and putting the Cypriot goal under pressure, Ireland were an altogether more solid unit.
Afterwards, Kenny Cunningham made it clear that, while delighted with the result, he was as concerned about the performance as anyone else.
“We can dwell on all the negatives of tonight’s performance but, psychologically, to have won that game playing well below our best, that’s a real positive,” said the captain. “But we’re not just gonna sweep this under the carpet. We’ll analyse it over the next couple of days. It’s no point just dismissing this and saying, ‘ah well, let’s hope for better’. We have to make it happen.”
Cunningham has identified the need for what he calls “mental toughness” going into Wednesday’s crunch game, and cites a high point in Group 4 to support his claim that Ireland have it in them to rise to the occasion.
“I think it’s about the right mental approach. There’s very little you can do on the training pitch over the next couple of days. The next couple of days will be about recuperation and physically just getting ourselves right.
“And then it’s about the mental approach going into the game. We play with each other each day in training, we know what good footballers we have in the squad. We’re not in fear of anybody in this group, including France, in terms of the individual ability we’ve got. We proved it in France - we went over there and passed them off the pitch at times. So we can produce that brand of football. But it’s a mental toughness to our play that we need to grasp. It is down to the last game now and everyone has to play their part.”
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