Gallant Irish pick the positives from wreck

There is no good way to lose but the manner of some defeats make them even worse than others.

This was one of those kick-yourself losses that keeps players awake at night and give managers nightmares, all the more so when it happens in a fixture of this importance.

All those days spent preparing in Malahide, Montecatini, Budapest, Gdynia and Poznan. All those training sessions and DVD’s.

All that travelling, the endless succession of hotels and time away from loved ones.

And then this.

Nobody felt worse about that than they did.

“Very disappointing,” said Kevin Doyle. “We can’t be depressed for long though because we have another massive one on Thursday.

“We’ll be fine, we’ll probably warm down (today) and watch the Spanish on Tuesday. We can’t feel too down. We need to be ready.”

It wasn’t just the manner of the goals conceded, but their timing.

“Yeah, goals at any time aren’t good but just before half-time when we’d scored to get back level and we wanted to get in level wasn’t good either. It’s difficult to take. Overall they probably didn’t slice us apart. They had good bits of possession but we weren’t good enough in one or two situations where we usually are.”

Robbie Keane admitted the second strike, Nikica Jelavic’s effort two minutes before the break, was the “killer” but the Irish players were adamant afterwards that Stephen Ward had been clipped by a Croatian leg before skewing the ball into the Everton man’s path.

“Definitely, yeah,” Ward insisted. “There was a similar one in the second-half when the referee penalised Shane Long. Maybe I didn’t go down theatrically. It’s disappointing. We felt we were right in the game and that decision really changed it although, to be fair, their striker scored a good goal in the second-half and we couldn’t come back from there.”

The atmosphere aside, this isn’t a night which Ireland will look back on with any great fondness but, with Spain looming ominously over the horizon, Ireland need to find positives and fast.

Simon Cox rustled about gamely for a few.

“The fact that we kept going until the end and kept creating chances until the end. We don’t want to look at the fact that it took them three minutes to score a goal. It’s obviously not something we’ll look at. We pride ourselves on being hard to beat. Maybe there were a bit of nerves going into the first game and we got caught with a sucker punch.”

Giovanni Trapattoni claimed it was too soon, too raw, to think of possible changes in the post-match press conference but he showed a willingness to bring on the second wave early in the second-half and the likes of Cox will surely hold out hopes of a promotion.

The West Brom forward was pressed into action out on the touchlines when he came on and played with some pep for over 40 minutes or so.

“I’ve played most of my season with West Brom in that position on the left. It wasn’t new to me that, I was quite happy. The main order was to help Stephen Ward defensively. Then it was to get forwards and try to get crosses in the box, play it inside and join in.”

Slaven Bilic said before this game that Ireland only had a Plan A. Trap may not have a Plan B but this Ireland team certainly looks like it needs something different to kick-start it’s campaign in Group C.