Ward: No hiding place now

For a brief moment, Stephen Ward feared his European Championship ambitions had been scuppered in Budapest.

When Adam Szalai manoeuvred a yard of space for himself about 12 yards from Shay Given’s goal, Ward’s natural instinct was to thrust out a leg and protect the Irish goal regardless of the fact that the result was all but meaningless.

It was perfectly timed to deprive the Hungarian striker of his coup but Szalai had already wound up to shoot by the time Ward’s intervention took place and the lanky centre-forward’s foot struck flesh and bone instead of ball.

“I got a shooting pain in my leg,” Ward explained yesterday after the Irish team’s training session at Gdynia’s municipal stadium. “Thankfully it was just on the bone and it was nothing serious.”

The incident occurred towards the end of a half which was far from comfortable for Ward whose performances for Ireland have occasionally betrayed the fact that he is a former striker now converted to the demands of playing full-back.

Ireland’s trip to Moscow last September was the most obvious example of that but there have been times in recent weeks against Bosnia-Herzegovina and Hungary when his positioning has been shown up by balls played in behind him.

Giovanni Trapattoni later pointed to a dearth of covering from his strike men as one of the contributing factors behind Hungary’s dominance and surfeit of chances last Monday and pondered the possibility of either Robbie Keane or Kevin Doyle dropping deeper to help.

“Maybe,” said Ward. “They started coming towards our back four maybe a little bit more than we would have liked and it might have caused us a few problems. When they come at you like that you can only really drop off, there is not much you can do.

“I’m sure that will be the case. It was a tough night over there. They are a decent side. They beat the Czechs a couple of nights before and the weather conditions didn’t help either. It was a weird sort of game.”

It’s not like things are about to get any easier.

Ward faces an eight-day period where he is likely to share living space with luminaries such as Ivan Rakitic, Daniele De Rossi and probably David Silva.

The Croat may be the least well-known of the trio but he has been singled out in some quarters as one to watch this month.

Born in Switzerland to Croat parents, he played for the Swiss at under-21 level before declaring for the Balkan country and his service to strikers such as Nikica Jelavic will be allied to a scoring rate of one goal in every four outings at international level.

“They are a good side,” said Ward. “They are a match for anybody. In a weird way, all the focus has been on all the other teams in the group rather than us so I feel that can help us. We can hopefully go and put our stamp on this tournament.”