Walters hopes Lansdowne roar will help lift the gloom

There’s no better man to lift the gloom in a room than Jon Walters.

Faced with a series of questions yesterday still freighted with the deadweight of a dismal night in Tbilisi, Walters conjured up images of glory days in Dublin to lift the collective heart ahead of tonight’s imposing challenge at the Aviva.

Which is all well and good but now, of course, Walters and his colleagues have to take that spirit onto the pitch and do the real talking against Serbia.

“We’re all responsible out there,” said the Burnley man. “There’s only so much the staff and the manager can do off the pitch. It’s down to us. We’ve got to recognise certain situations on the pitch and deal with them.

“As a player, you relish the biggest occasions. That’s why you’re here to play football. That’s why you do it. Sometimes it seems to suit us that our back is against the wall. Serbia at home, two points behind them, it certainly is. But if we come out fighting like we have done in previous games, we’ve got a great chance.”

For Walters, there’s no added incentive in trying to prove the critics wrong after the hammering the players and the management have taken since Saturday. “I don’t think we need any extra motivation,” he said.

“We’re all disappointed with the result in Georgia. We sat here after the last couple of games and we said it’s never going to be plain sailing in the group. We’re not one of the top teams in Europe like Spain, Italy, Germany, France. We’re not going to run away with the group. But we’re always going to be competitive and be in there.

“It was a disappointing result on Saturday but it’s always going to be the same mentality in every game, to get the three points. We can draw on past results we’ve had at the Aviva and hopefully go full throttle and go for it.

“We’ve seen the atmosphere we can create as players. It’s hard playing in games where you give up possession, and sometimes it’s hard to watch. But if we can get on the front foot, make teams make mistakes and press them high, that suits us probably a bit better.

“As I said, we can draw on those previous games we’ve had in the Aviva. That atmosphere can be electric and it’s great for the players on the pitch.”

Seamus Coleman has once again arrived in camp to lend his support but it’s his young understudy, Cyrus Christie, who will have to try to follow the captain’s lead against the Serbians tonight.

“You want to move on as quickly as you can after a game like that,” the Middlesbrough man said of Saturday’s dismal display in Tbilisi, during which he was one of the few brighter sparks on the rare occasions Ireland got forward, supplying the free-kick assist for Shane Duffy’s goal and the cross which Shane Long headed over the top.

“We have to put those chances away,” he said. “But overall we did not control the ball enough or play enough football to get our attacking players into the game. We need to control the game better. We have to have a bit more belief on the ball. And have got it in our locker to do that”.

He’s predicting much better tonight, then, even if Serbia are clearly a superior team to Georgia.

“Of course we can beat them,” he declared. “We have seen what we can do - we have beaten many a bigger team over the course of our campaign. We’re going into this game in front of our own fans and we have to put on a performance.

“We know that we have to win and stake our place in the group. We have dropped two points in Tbilisi so now we need to take on Serbia and take all three.”