Martin O’Neill: 'I couldn’t be more proud'

There was no trademark leap in the air.

When Bjorn Kuipers called for the match ball, Martin O’Neill simply turned slowly towards the dugout and wrapped his arms around Roy Keane. He followed it up with hugs for virtually every member of his backroom staff and then it was the turn of his players.

All of them.

If a smile creased his face it was fleeting and lost amid the embraces and the claps on the back. As celebrations go it was as restrained as they come by the man on whose shoulders responsibility for this campaign ultimately lay.

It was an interesting snapshot, but not so much as the last act of the night on the Aviva turf when, after the players completed their lap of honour, O’Neill pulled and dragged his backroom staff into a line to take the stadium’s applause with him.

Roy Keane was having none of it, but the sentiment was unmistakable from a man who had spoken a few days earlier of the desire and commitment of everyone involved in his set-up. This may be a team without stars, but a team it most certainly is.

O’Neill praised his high-profile assistant manager to the hilt last night again, admitting he was an “iconic” if “polarising” figure — though never the latter in the dressing-room — and there was a mention for Seamus McDonagh and Steve Guppy, too.

Ultimately, though he focused on the players.

“I couldn’t be more proud,” he said. “They are a fantastic bunch of players who wanted to play for their country, which is very important. Some players see it as a chore. In my two years here there have been no issues whatsoever since the competition started and they have shown that.

“I don’t think we had anything left to give.”

He apologised for his repeated use of the word “special” and lamented that he wasn’t exactly giving us Shakespeare, but it didn’t matter as he looked back over a 14-month campaign that began in Tbilisi with Aiden McGeady’s vital late winner.

“I am absolutely delighted for myself naturally, but I am thrilled for the players because they have put their heart and souls into the games. Even after the Scotland game here, which put us on the back foot with four games left, I said it was still in our hands.

“We had to win the games against Gibraltar and Georgia and one of the last two games. It was a tall order, but we did that against Germany here with Shane Long’s goal. That gave us this chance against Bosnia. We never gave up.”

It’s just over two years since O’Neill was unveiled as the new Republic of Ireland manager at Dublin’s Gibson Hotel and admitted plainly that, as far as John Delaney was concerned, his remit was to get the team to France.

The FAI’s CEO has dismissed that notion since, pointing out that O’Neill made those remarks long before his side had been placed in a pickle of a group alongside Germany’s world champions, Poland and a Scotland side rediscovering itself under Gordon Strachan.

It was a caveat that lost its currency last night. O’Neill had done it.

“It was a moment I never once dared to dream of, getting to France, because of the group we were involved in. So that was special. The night was special. The Germany night last month was wonderful, but I thought it was eclipsed tonight. These are the nights you live for.”

O’Neill’s counterpart, Mehmed Bazdarevic, was asked for his opinion on the referee’s decision to award Ireland that controversial first-half penalty, but his answer was lost in a translation so confusing as to be unusable.

Among the other questions put to him was a statement that maybe Bosnia-Herzegovina’s ills were to be found in the stuttering start to the campaign under his predecessor Safet Susic, but Bazdarevic clearly had regrets about more recent events, too.

“We could have played better in Zenica,” he said of the first leg, played last Friday, “but we needed to take our chances in the first-half. The conditions in the second-half did not help us, but that is not an excuse either.”

This was Ireland’s night. O’Neill’s and his team’s.