Brady: a tall order, but it can be done

LIAM BRADY confessed that, along with Marco Tardelli, he’d had “a hunch” that Ireland would draw France in next month’s play-off, even texting his prediction to a friend ahead of yesterday’s draw.

And now that it has come to pass? “France have got an abundance of top players so that makes the tie quite daunting but, having said that, a lot will be down to how the teams go about things. I don’t want to go too much into their problems but it hasn’t been a straightforward qualifying campaign for them. We’ll be dissecting all the games they’ve played – the manager is very thorough with those things.

“We’re a strong team and we’ve proven that in the qualifying games. The manager’s organised us, he’s created a very strong team spirit, a strong mentality. And we’re going to show all of that when we face the French in what is the most glamorous tie we could have had. No matter who we got it was going to be difficult. We would have players on a similar level to Greece but we probably would have been expected to win that game and that was the downside of that. We would have been expected to go through and that creates a sort of pressure in itself. But this tie is the opposite. I think we’re well and truly underdogs. But everybody will be behind us and what a great achievement it would be if we get to South Africa by knocking the French out in the play-offs.”