Walters looks to the future
The subject, as you might have guessed, is Ireland’s dismal European Championships and the man being asked if it has become off-limits in the camp is Jon Walters, the Stoke striker who is line to make only his second competitive start for his country against Kazakhstan tomorrow.
“No, it’s not unmentionable, you just want to put it behind you,” he says. “It was such a disappointing thing. It was great to be there and the build-up was something everyone was looking forward to, so to lose all the games left a sour taste. But then you come back after a few weeks and it’s straight back into club football. This is a new campaign and the squad has a lot of fresh faces in it, so hopefully there are a lot of exciting times ahead.”
But we’re not ready to let him drain the cup of woe just yet. Did the Euros damage confidence and morale in the squad?
“With the group we were in, with Italy and Spain, you always knew it was going to be tough,” he reflects. “So the first game was massive. Ideally, we would win the first game and move on to the last two. But it wasn’t to be.”
Having failed to get off to a good start in the Euro finals, Walters feels it’s no less important that Ireland open up their long World Cup qualifying campaign with a win here in Astana.
“In a group with Germany, it’s important to get points on the board straight away and get off to a good start,” he says. “It’s going to be something different because it’s on an astroturf pitch but you’ve got to get on with that. We played in Switzerland last year with Stoke, in a Europa League qualifier, and we were thinking bad things before the game but it was really good. The roll of the ball was a bit different, it was moving slow, but other than that, it was pretty good. A little bit of a difficult bounce but it’s not like you were going back 20 years to the plastic pitches.”
In short, there can be no making excuses before the event.
“Against Kazakhstan, you’d want to be taking full points,” says Walters. “The Faroes, the same. Hopefully we’ll get the result to come back on a high. It’s like the win in Armenia in the first game of the Euros — you tend to find towards the end of a campaign that some of the results are more important than you thought at the time.”
The new campaign will, of course, lack some old warriors, and Walters admits it’s strange not to have Shay Given and Damien Duff around.
“Since I’ve been in the squads, they’ve always been there,” he says. “So it’s different now, but these things happen. And it happens in all football clubs. You tend to have a shake up in numbers every few seasons. International football is no different.”
But Walters is especially pleased that one older boy is staying on — even if Robbie Keane’s presence means the contest for a place upfront remains hugely competitive, with the likes of Kevin Doyle, Shane Long, Simon Cox, Andy Keogh all competing for a supporting role which, right now, appears to be Walters’ to lose.
“Robbie is looking as sharp as ever,” he observes. “It’s great. You’ve got to be careful to get the mix right, a young squad and some experienced boys as well. And the competition for places is good to have because we’ll have certain parts of the campaign when everyone is not going to be fit, so it’s good to have that many options and you can mix up formations too. We can do a lot of things really.”
The appliance of science is being put to good use ahead of tomorrow’s game, with the players able to access a dedicated website to study the opposition — an especially useful service, Walters feels, when they’re as enigmatic as Kazakhstan.
“The IT man (Brian McCarthy) set it up for us and it’s a good set-up,” he explains. “We can go and look at it and download attacking clips, defending clips, set pieces, and whatever player you want to look at. It’s first-class.’’
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