We’ll have the bit between our teeth, says resolute Doyle

KEVIN DOYLE cut a distinctly disenchanted figure when he was called ashore by Giovanni Trapattoni at Croke Park on Saturday.

No matter that he’d already put in a monumental 70- minute shift on land and in the air: Doyle is a striker and he knows that you can’t score from the bench.

But if we were hoping that we might whip up some hot copy a la Thierry Henry and Raymond Domenech out of the Wexford man not seeing eye to eye with the Italian, well, forget about it.

That’s not Kevin Doyle’s style. Already he’s up for the next challenge, in the Stade de France tomorrow night, and clearly intent on a more extended shift this time.

“It’d be a bit strange if I was happy coming off,” he says of his body language as he left the pitch in Croke Park on Saturday. “Really, no player is, and for a few minutes after it you’re never that happy, but the manager changed it and freshened things up and he knows.

“Strikers are like that, they just want to be involved. You just want to be on the pitch when something happens, if a chance is created. You might feel it a little in the legs but it still hurts a bit when you see fresh legs being brought on after 70 or 80 minutes. But that just seems to be the way it is.”

In the Irish scheme of things, Doyle’s role is physically demanding at the best of times and Saturday night, he concedes, was not one of those.

“The pitch was very heavy, the heaviest I’ve played on in Croke Park,” he says. “It took lots of physical effort from us. I think if you were to see our stats, you’d see we probably put in a good bit more and ran a bit more to get that performance than the French did. We were all shattered after it.

“It was early to bed and pretty tired the following morning.”

Doyle reckons that the physical toll, allied to France playing with more urgency, accounted for the difference between Ireland’s performances in the first and second half on Saturday.

“It was a bit of everything really,” says the Wolves man. “In the first half we played some good stuff. In the second half, the pitch was heavy, your legs go a bit and it gets harder to close them down. The nicking the ball that we were doing in the first half becomes that bit harder. And the way they play too – you saw (Nicolas) Anelka and (Thierry) Henry were picking it up off their centre halves, and it’s hard to cope with that. Who do you track? Who do you try to block? But although they had a lot of possession, you could say that we had the better chances.

“Their goal was jammy and we just want that to happen to us over there.”

With a striker’s empathy, Doyle said he could feel Liam Lawrence’s pain on Saturday night when Manchester United defender Patrice Evra managed to deny the Stoke man what seemed a certain goal.

“You know that you’re going to score before you score sometimes,” Doyle observes. “It’s a strange feeling. I think Liam Lawrence probably had it on Saturday. That’s probably the worst feeling, when you’re expecting to score, you do everything right and it just gets nicked away – he didn’t even get the corner which managed to make him look even worse. But football’s strange and you’re relying on your instincts to an extent.”

Doyle makes a point of mentioning the ‘12th man’ effect at Croker, the mutual appreciation society between team and crowd evident when the players came back out of the dressing room after the game to hail, and be hailed by, the supporters.

“Saturday night was the best atmosphere we’ve had in Croke Park by a long way,” he enthuses. “When we came back to the dressing room we were thinking that it could be our last game at Croke Park and that it was the end of our home qualifying campaign.

“So I’m not sure whose decision it was (to go back out) but everybody just felt that it should be done and a lot of people stayed behind to applaud us which was nice.”

And so to the ‘second half’ in the Stade de France tomorrow night where an Irish goal is now essential.

“I don’t think we have any problem believing that we can do it,” Doyle maintains. “We’ve to go and score but we’ve done that in the group, scored away in most games.

“I’ve been told that their record at home isn’t the best when it comes to keeping clean sheets.

“In a way the pressure’s off a little now because we’re 1-0 down heading away, everyone – apart from the players and the management – will be thinking that it’s nearly done and we’ll hopefully be able to take advantage of that situation. Hopefully the French will feel the same, feel that they’re nearly in a World Cup.”

“Everybody is up for it again. The manager’s been making the point that it’s only half time and 1-0.

“We have to go there and score, and everything being against us gives us that extra notch. A few of the lads were angry straight after the game (on Saturday) and all of that so we’ll have the bit between our teeth tomorrow night.

“We’re all pretty confident. There seems to be that sort of aura that we will be able to do it in Paris.”