Andrews: It’s hard to kill us off

Ireland have built a reputation as a team that is bloody difficult to kill off under Giovanni Trapattoni so it was strangely fitting that they should share a hotel yesterday with the man who is best known for starring roles in the ‘Die Hard’ movies.

Bruce Willis was in the Hungarian capital to shoot his latest movie this week, part of it in the same digs as an Irish side that was killing time before early evening transfer to the Puskas Ferenc Stadion for their last warm-up fixture before Euro 2012.

Like the wise-cracking John McClane character, Ireland found themselves hanging tough in the face of a determined assault with the Hungarians forcing a string of saves from Shay Given and Kieren Westwood while Stephen Hunt cleared a late pot off his line.

Croatian coach, Slaven Bilic, looked on from the stand throughout and claimed afterwards that it was easier to engineer a one-on-one against the Italian goalkeeper than his Irish counterpart and Keith Andrews was tickled by that.

“Did he say that? Was he at the match? It’s well documented our style of play and how we are set up. We are very frustrating to play against, I can imagine.

“We pulled out the last-ditch tackles and even Hunty at the end there clearing it off the line. We have great belief in ourselves and we take great pride in our unbeaten run and clean sheets. We would have liked the performance to be better but you don’t want to play better and lose.

“We are happy that we are going (to Poland) unbeaten.”

Bilic has been quoted labelling Ireland as the weakest team in the group but he said otherwise here.

“In Croatia someone has not twisted my words,” he protested, “but made it up like I said that you don’t have a good team and blah blah. It’s totally nonsense. I have big respect for your team, I played against your team last summer (in Dublin).

” It’s an unbelievably competitive team, they are very solid, they play very simple football. They don’t take a lot of risks but they are still dangerous enough with some really good forwards, two strikers and two wide men who are very quick. One-on-one they can decide a game.”

When asked what he made of Trapattoni’s decision to name his team a week prior to the game in Poznan, Bilic replied that he would believe the Irish 11 when handed the teamsheet one hour prior to the off and Kevin Doyle seemed to agree.

“Things can always change,” said the Wolves striker. “He’s thrown in some curveballs before. I wouldn’t say it’s 100% certain.

“It won’t change anyone’s intensity in training or how we go about things. It won’t make any difference to me.”