Time to lay the ghosts of the past

NO-ONE wearing a green shirt emerged smelling of roses the last time Ireland played in Nicosia but if there is one player with more reason than most to wince at the painful memories of that night, it has to be Richard Dunne.

True, Aston Villa’s new recruit did get on the score sheet in October 2006, levelling the tie at 2-2 coming up to half-time but, thereafter, it was downhill all the way as a humiliating experience culminated in the defender’s dismissal for a second bookable offence just two minutes after the Cypriots had scored their fifth goal.

It was, the big centre-half admits now, as bad a night as he has ever experienced on a football pitch, a “terrible” 90 minutes when, “whatever could go wrong, did go wrong”.