I’d love another shot, admits Matt Doherty, after subdued debut

By Brendan O'Brien

Saturday may have delivered a first ever start and a competitive debut for his country but it’s hard to imagine Matt Doherty keeping this bore draw with Denmark on the Sky+ list for very long.

Which isn’t to suggest that it didn’t have it’s merits.

The Wolverhampton Wanderers wing-back understood the value of steadying the ship after the Republic of Ireland’s disastrous losses to Denmark and Wales in the past year. And the clean sheet is always a good box to tick.

His own evening was, well, much ado about little enough. Stationed wide right, he cut an isolated figure in a side that plays very differently to Wolves and he almost, inadvertently, contributed to a Danish goal at one point in the first-half.

“I’d like to just have played a bit better, to be honest. It was something I’d love to do again,” he admitted afterwards.

It’s hard to think that he won’t.

The clamour for Doherty’s inclusion has been such that it was never likely that he would live up to the billing. This just wasn’t the type of evening for anyone to shine with the ball given the scars suffered by Martin O’Neill men of late.

He felt fine with the system, his wing-back role down the right aping at a basic level the one he is employed to do at Molineux, though with a “little difference”. What that was he didn’t say but we’ll have a punt here and suggest that Wolves play a tad more football.

The priority for Ireland here was to rediscover some equilibrium.

To counter the awful memories of that Danish destruction at the Aviva in the second leg of the World Cup play-off. No-one expected that Cyrus Christie playing in a central midfield role would have been part of that.

Even the man himself.

The Fulham defender revealed afterwards that he hadn’t played in that area of operations since he was a 14-year old kid playing academy football and it wasn’t until the squad arrived at the Aviva on Saturday that he was told of the manager’s thinking.

“Yeah, I kind of had a picture from training the other day. Sometimes the manager doesn’t give too much away. There are a lot of players to choose from. Before he read the team sheet out he told me and, as a footballer you always have to be ready.

“You have to be ready for your opportunity and that’s what I do. I do it for my club as well. I’ve played a lot over the last few years and 110 per cent is what I give.

“Some people think my attitude isn’t great because I’ve got a laid back manner.

“It probably doesn’t look like I’m trying but I’m running around everywhere and doing what I’m good at. I always seem to come in for a bit of stick but it’s one of them, I just take the good with the bad and working hard and doing my thing.”

Christie was singled out for considerable criticism by Alan Shearer on the BBC the week before for his role in Fulham’s 5-1 home loss to Arsenal.

His man-of-the-match award against Denmark, surprising as it was, would have been timely in that regard.

“I didn’t even see it,” he said of Shearer’s take.

“Someone told me about me about it and I turned my notifications off on Twitter because I’ve mentioned it, I always seem to get abuse whether I play well or whether I played badly.

“You have to take the good and the bad, the pros and the cons in football, and that’s what it is. I’ll always have belief in myself, I’ll always back myself and my ability. I go home every day and I go and do my extra training away from the training pitch, to try and make myself the best I can be.

“Shearer’s got his opinion. At the end of the day he has to sit in the studio, he has to be positive and he has to be negative and I was the one to be chosen to be negative. The manager asked me to do a job and I stuck to that.”