“We must all stand up and be counted”

A LESSON should be learned. Before Ireland’s biggest game in two years, there was a real mood of optimism in the air. The Russians, we were assured, were in turmoil and also didn’t travel well.

It's difficult to know if this mood seeped into the players' minds but judging by some of their reaction, perhaps it did. When neither Damien Duff nor Clinton Morrison stop to chat about a football match, something is terribly amiss. As Shay Given accepted qualification has been taken out of Ireland's hands again.

"It was a strange kind of game," Given felt. "They didn't create many chances, we didn't create many. When they got the goal back, they sat very deep and we couldn't break them down, but a lot of teams are going to come here and do that and we are going to have to look at a way to deal with that." At the moment, there are few options. Ireland now depend on Duff as much as they depended on Roy Keane two years ago. It is a massive weight for any player to carry, especially a 24-year-old winger with a languid style. But on Saturday at any rate, there was no other spark, no other player created a buzz in the crowd, not even Matt Holland with his manful efforts to lift the crowd with 10 minutes remaining.