Martin O’Neill: Players weren’t ready to come home

Martin O’Neill believes if Ireland can reproduce the performance they put in against Italy, they have a real chance of knocking out host nation France in Lyon on Sunday.

“Absolutely,” he declared last night. “We will have to replicate that performance from Wednesday night. We will have to produce energy when we don’t have the ball but we also have to go and produce the type of football we played that night. And we have to replicate it in spades. And I think we can. I think Wednesday night’s performance would go very close.”

O’Neill acknowledged that, despite the team’s fine display, the line between success and failure at the end was exceedingly thin.