Who dares wins but patience the key

TRAWL through your memories of Ireland’s famous away days of the recent past and games like Copenhagen and Seville in ‘93 or Amsterdam and Lisbon in 2001 probably come somewhere near the top of the list.

Try to pick out our last standout away ‘win’ against a top-ranked nation, however, and you’ll have to go all the way back to 1987 when Mark Lawrenson found the Scottish net at Hampden Park.

Not that Ireland haven’t won a few on their travels since, mind. The Boys In Green have hit the road 25 times for a competitive qualifier in the last dozen years and brought back all the goods on ten of those occasions. Impressive, right? Well, just as with any analysis of Robbie Keane’s goals, Ireland’s list throws up alarmingly few of European soccer’s bigger fish.