Shane Duffy: ‘I will learn from my mistakes’

Shane Duffy will carry home many thoughts from yesterday’s defeat to France and these European Championships.

The memory of standing in front of thousands of cheering Irish fans at full time, making his competitive debut in the win over Italy and being sent off for chopping down Antoine Griezmann.

But one thought stands out above them all; the feeling he belongs on this stage.

“I feel I can play at this level, I feel I am comfortable enough to play,” said the 24-year-old. “The more I can play, the better I will get; I will learn from my mistakes, but I feel I can play here and that’s a positive for me from the tournament.

“To even be here is such a big thing for me, to play a part in the last two games was a special moment for me and I will never forget it.

“Hopefully now we can get a few more players coming through but it looks good at the minute. The experience and the youth is good and we can hopefully build, if we want to get these feelings back for the World Cup.”

Things didn’t go quite to plan yesterday in Lyon, as Duffy was caught out of position for the opening goal, and sent off minutes later for his mistimed tackle on goalscorer Antoine Griezmann.

“There’s a lot of things I can look at but I am obviously disappointed to get sent off, if I had left it any later it would have been a penalty and maybe another goal so it was a decision I took, I don’t know if it was the right one or the wrong one,” he said.

“I have let the team down a bit, left us with 10 men for a long period. But I gave my all out there, it might not be good enough but it’s the best I can do. I would rather win the ball [than get a red] and I had a chance of winning it. The disappointing thing is that it shouldn’t have got to that point, two-v-one, we could have dealt with it a lot better.

“It’s a tough one to take after the first half we had, we were so comfortable and so confident but in the second half it goes completely wrong, with me getting sent off and that,” groaned Duffy.

“In the first half I was comfortable, we dealt with everything they threw at us, at the start of the second half we just couldn’t get out, they have good players, and they turned it up a gear, we should have defended the goals better so that’s disappointing.

“At 1-1, with a bit better defending and we could have seen it out another five or ten minutes and try to get another goal but it didn’t go that way, it was 10 minutes where they basically won the game, and that’s disappointing.

“We gave everything we can and we left nothing out there. We’ll try to take the positives out of it, hold our heads up high. We still had a decent tournament.”