'You’ve got to take the positives' - Callum Robinson feeling positive in Ireland camp

By Brendan O’Brien

Entering the indoor warm-up area that doubles as a mixed zone after Saturday’s Nations League bore draw with Denmark at the Aviva Stadium was to step through some sort of mysterious portal into another dimension.

The mood outside those metal doors was subterranean. Thousands of supporters drifted into the darkness on the back of an evening which once again illuminated the limitations of this current Republic of Ireland side and its management.

Inside was a different story. Players emerged from the dressing rooms, their take on the game just played as bright as their lurid green tracksuits. People talk of disconnects in modern sport: here was a classic of the genre.

”You’ve got to take the positives,” said Callum Robinson. “We played much better than we did in the Wales game (in Cardiff last month). We’ve got some real ability. We could have beaten Denmark if we took our chances. It’s got to be positive now.”

Robinson’s take was, to be fair, more likely than not skewed by his own encouraging cameo. The arrival of the Preston North End man injected a belated element of life into an Irish attack that had lain comatose for almost 70 minutes.

As an attacker sitting on the bench you want to come on and change the game and to do well. I was watching the game and there were little pockets where I felt I could affect the game.

Robinson was employed wide on the left wing but the question for an Irish side lacking proven goalscorers at this level, and one showing such an inability to fashion chances for whatever forward is on duty, is whether he is better there or closer to the target?

Robinson has scored five times in his last eight games for Preston in the Championship and, against the Welsh this evening, he could be rubbing shoulders with a number of players who are residents of the same neighbourhood for most of the season. Five of the Welsh XI that faced Ireland in Cardiff last month play in the second tier of English football: a fact that made the 4-1 defeat and the overwhelming superiority of the home team that night all the more difficult to swallow.

“A few goals go in early doors and it sort of killed us from there,” Robinson said of that defeat. “We shored it up in the second half and it was one-all in that half and we would have taken that when we got in at half-time.”

It’s a memory that Robinson claims to have all but extricated from his mind now and Darren Randolph has dealt with it in much the same manner. The Ireland goalkeeper has, predictably, batted away talk of the ‘r’ word ahead of tonight’s return in Dublin.

You say revenge but we need to win and we will feel even better if we do win. It might feel like revenge then but you can’t go out there with that in your head and go hell for leather from the start. You will get into trouble if you do that.

Randolph talks about how Ireland still have everything to play for in this inaugural Nations League and how a win this evening would allow Martin O’Neill’s side travel to Aarhus for the closing fixture, against Denmark, with four points in the bag.

They will have to score — once at least — for that to happen and, as has been remarked upon extensively this past few days, Ireland have been creating little or nothing in the way of scoring chances for the past 12 months.

O’Neill has voiced the need for his team to do just that, and to do it by playing more football, but these are words we have heard from him in the past — and from his predecessors — without much ever changing.

Where exactly is that improvement coming from?

“Use the ball better, be a bit braver,” said Randolph.

“It’s international football and this is a new squad coming together. It might take people time to get comfortable and get used to international football and now there are no friendlies to blood people. You are right into games that matter.”