VIDEO: Discipline key for Ireland as Martin O’Neill thinks Long-term

Martin O’Neill had already been making plans to do without Shane Long before the expected confirmation finally came through yesterday that the striker will miss tomorrow’s first leg of the European Championship play-off in Bosnia.

Long is remaining at Southampton for treatment on his ankle injury but has not been ruled out for Monday’s second leg in the Aviva Stadium. Earlier in the day, O’Neill had said that, if the player does make Monday’s game, “you would have to call that a bonus — that’s the way I’ve looked at it in the last seven to ten days”.

In other injury news, Charlton Athletic goalkeeper Stephen Henderson has been drafted in as a replacement for Keiren Westwood, who had to return to Sheffield Wednesday after a pre-existing ankle injury flared up in training at the FAI National Training Centre. David Meyler is being monitored after shipping a knock making a block tackle on Marc Wilson in the same session.

Better news is that Alan Judge, who stayed behind at Brentford to continue his rehabilitation from a hamstring injury, was cleared to join up with the squad after training for the past few days with his club. He was due to arrive at the team’s Dublin base last night.

O’Neill has acknowledged that, in the team’s rollercoaster bid to qualify for France 2016, there are no grey areas anymore. “We’ve talked about this, that’s right,” he said. “It’s not a case of wondering will somebody else get a result for you. Right from the outset, you’re wondering how this or that result will go. We were in the airport in Tbilisi finding out about the Germany-Scotland game and obviously wanting Germany to win because they were the side that was completely going to go through. It’s a natural thing. Now it’s actually down to two games. There is no outside influence. It’s what happens on Friday night and Monday night.”

And particularly tomorrow night, in what will be a hothouse atmosphere in Zenica, the manager is calling for cool heads from his players. “More so than ever, discipline is really important for us,” he said. “It is worth emphasising to a large degree, it really is. You don’t want to be somebody getting a silly booking after 10 or 15 minutes in the match and then being on the edge for the whole game. These things can still happen but if you can avoid it at all.

“But it’s discipline in every aspect of it, the discipline of knowing what your job is and doing it to best of your ability. And, actually, not just that — when corners and free kicks come in you might have to do two jobs. Not just your own but you might have to go and cover for your comrade.”

On specific selection issues, it was no surprise O’Neill declined to show his hand when asked whether he might favour a Stephen Ward/Robbie Brady or Robbie Brady/James McClean axis down the left side. “I don’t think I’d want to go into that,” he said. “I think that our job is to go out there and try to score a goal. You have to balance the whole thing about what is good for you offensively and, obviously, making sure that you’re as strong as possible defensively as well. We’re missing John (O’Shea) and we have to compensate for that in some aspects. I’ll take those things into consideration but it’s not just the going forward part of the game that’s important, it’s obviously what we do when we don’t have the ball.”

As someone who played for a cross-community Northern Ireland team at the height of the Troubles, O’Neill understands the special sense of purpose of an ethnically diverse Bosnian side whose country emerged, not without considerable suffering, from the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

“My own view in the mid-1970s was that the Yugoslavs were the most talented, gifted players playing in European football but that they didn’t always necessarily, shall I say, match that as a team,” he said. “I remember Northern Ireland playing in Belgrade and one of the reasons was very evident in the game. When their centre-forward, (Ivica) Surjack, got the ball, he was booed every time because he played for Hajduk Split. Of course, I didn’t say anything. I was only a young lad at the time and didn’t know the political situation as acutely as we’ve all been made aware of since.

“But the fact is that they have pulled themselves together, obviously split up into certain areas, and Bosnia have now accumulated a side that has not surprised me in terms of technical ability. I think that is just written into their DNA, those players from the last 30 or 40 years.

“They also seem to have a good spirit going. The new manager has come in to galvanise things as well. I would have said that, from the outset, Bosnia would have felt that they should quality automatically. There might have been a bit of in-fighting or whatever the case might be but their results against the big sides weren’t that bad at all.

“But they’ve got hold of themselves and they almost feel it’s their right to qualify because they’ve such talent at their disposal. And I don’t know this, and I might be totally off the mark here, I think they have shown in the last few games the sort of unity that might have been missing early on for some unknown reason. Maybe it’s to do with the new coach coming in and getting them together. He has to take some credit for that. There definitely seems to be a decent spirit.”