Duffy: Danes will expect a different Ireland
When, after just six minutes of the second leg of the World Cup play-off against Denmark in 2017, Shane Duffy used his height and his head to put Ireland a goal to the good, the eruption of joy on the pitch and in the stands of the Aviva Stadium suggested that what we’d just witnessed was one of those defining moments which the Derryman might find hard to top for the rest of his career.
Instead, as he or we hardly need reminding, it turned out to be the wholly misleading prelude to a brutally shocking jolt for Irish football, Duffy’s goal destined to become only a minor footnote on a night when Christian Eriksen went on to write all the headlines as the visitors romped to a 5-1 win.
Ahead of his and Ireland’s latest meeting with now familiar foes, Duffy visibly winces as he recalls a game from which, as Ireland manager, Martin O’Neill would never really recover.
“It was probably the worst night of my career to be honest and the feeling afterwards in the dressing room was horrific,” says Duffy.
“But you have to feel that and then say, ‘don’t let that happen again’. You have to learn from those nights.
"Every footballer goes through tough periods and that was a tough period for us and it sort of carried into the next campaign where it killed us for a while.”
He is asked if he sensed a kind of darkness enveloping the camp as things flatlined in O’Neill’s last year in charge.
I wouldn’t have called it a darkness. They were just tough times when everything was going against us. But obviously, the new manager came in and gave us all a fresh start.
"New players knew they were going to get a chance to start, there were new formations, and everyone has been really good since he has come in.
"It’s been enjoyable and it’s been about having fun as well as being serious.
"I think that Mick brings that with his character so it’s all good at the moment — although we all know how football can suddenly turn about so we just have to keep trying to play our game.”
After four meetings with Ireland in little more than a year-and-a-half, Duffy reckons the Danes will be rightly anticipating “a different approach” from the visitors in Copenhagen tomorrow night.
“They know that something new always comes out of having a change of manager,” he observes.
“They’ll probably think it’s not going to be the same as the last four games. They’ll be aware too that we’re off two wins in a row.
"And you know if you get an Irish team strong together they’ll be hard to beat.
"Sometimes it won’t be pretty out there and we’ll have to defend well but we’ve also got to try and get our moments and make the most of them. Go out there, be positive and bring it to them.”
From hard-earned experience, with Brighton as well as Ireland, Duffy knows that keeping tabs on Christian Eriksen will have to be high up on the visitors’ agenda in the Parken Stadium.
“He is a top player. We’re always very aware of him when we’re playing Spurs. You have to be aware of where he pops up in pockets, getting in between the midfielders and centre-halves.
"That’s a very dangerous position. You can’t give him a yard to shoot. He scored the winner against us (in April), after we defended very well for 88 minutes, and then he pops up and it goes in the bottom corner.
"That’s the difference with top players – they get one chance, one yard, and they punish you.
”With Ireland, we’ve done reasonably well against him in the previous games except for that one game. If you give him too much time and space, he will punish you like he did that night.
"You’ve got to stay with him, get close to him and get tight. Hopefully, that’s our gameplan: don’t let them get the ball down and stroke it wherever they want to.
"Which is easy when there’s no pressure. We’re gonna try and press them early on, try and make them make mistakes.
“I feel as though we can beat them but we have to have that winning mentality in the squad that we can go and beat any team.
"I think that is what we have to do: have every player believing that we can win every game and not just be thinking that we can hang on for a draw. Go there, put it on them and win.”
We invite him to offer his take on the old style v result debate. Does it matter to him how victory is achieved?
“Everyone wants to play like Barcelona, of course, but you’ve got to be realistic about what players you have, who you’re playing and things like that,” he says.
“I’d love to go out there, play football, and win 3-0 or 4-0 every game but it’s not like that. You’re up against good players, good teams, and sometimes it might take a dogged one-nil win away from home.
"And I’d be ecstatic if we had one shot and we beat Denmark one-nil. It’s three points at the end of the day.
“But you wouldn’t want to play like that all the time. You want to put your own stamp on the game, play your football, loads of attacking football.
"But you’ve got to have balance. You’ve got to do it in the right time and the right place. You don’t want to try to look good by dribbling out of your six-yard box.
“But, yeah, it’s nice to keep the ball and make them work and run after you for a bit. And hopefully, that’s what we’ll do on Friday.
"It’s important when you get those moments to try and keep the ball and get a breather after chasing them.
We’ll have a game-plan, we’ll have three midfielders in there — if we do play three — and they’ll keep the ball for us and, hopefully, we can have a bit of control of the game and, as I say, take it them.
Having had just two games under new international management, Shane Duffy now finds himself also having to come to terms with a changing of the guard at Brighton, Chris Hughton’s departure a source of “shock” and “disappointment” for the defender.
“It was obviously the club’s decision, but I thought he left the club in a good place, got the club to where it is now,” he says.
“But it’s football, there are tough decisions in the game and that’s been made.”
Asked to sum up the former Ireland international as a man and a manager, Duffy says: “He’s brilliant. He is one of them where he never gets too high or too low.
"Even if you are losing or on a bad run, he won’t get too low, he’ll pick you up. He does a lot for the lads off the pitch as well.
"He is sort of a father figure, where if you are having a bad time off the pitch, you can go to him and he’ll talk to you and help you.
"If your form’s not there, he’ll help you. That’s all he has ever done for me personally.
"He has been great for my career, he has improved me as a player — and off the pitch as well he has been huge for me.”
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