Stephen Kenny's Ireland salvage draw but fail their latest test

James McClean and Shane Duffy react after failing to convert a chance on goal against Azerbaijan at the Aviva Stadium. Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile

Stephen Kenny’s bid to separate the Republic of Ireland from the more agricultural aspects of its past hit another stumbling block this evening and it came in the shape of a 1-1 scoreline that has been harvested by so many Irish sides of the past.

Ireland’s score draws of days gone by have invariably been etched out in a rousing end game, the Boys in Green raging belatedly against a 1-0 deficit and building towards a frenzied crescendo on the back of the guttural roars from a frustrated audience.

This one had all that, Shane Duffy’s thumping header (is there any other kind?) with three minutes of normal time left sending the half-full Aviva into a brief paroxysm of joy and engendering hope that they might even ‘do a Portugal’ on it.

Instead, it was a stalemate once again. The boos that accompanied the final whistle were perfunctory and short and it was impossible to know if they were directed at the team, the time-wasting Azerbaijanis, or the referee who accommodated their every ‘injury’.

It may have been all three.

Amid the disgruntlement, of whatever hue, came the sound of clapping. It too was brief and lacked conviction but the divergent noises demonstrated again just how Kenny’s plans and his team have won some fans over regardless of results but lost others.

They may have drawn this one but it goes down as another exam failed.

For months the debate as to the merits or otherwise of the senior manager and his grand project had been played out on the airwaves, in the printed press, online, and via the murky jungle of opinion that is social media.

The only voice missing was that of actual fans in the Aviva Stadium.

Wednesday’s bravura effort away to Portugal had injected new optimism into the idea of the current Republic of Ireland team just in time for their date back in Dublin in front 25,000 or so punters but you still wondered at the manner of welcome that awaited.

This was still an Ireland side that sat bottom of Group A alongside tonight’s opponents. A squad with one win, against Andorra, in Kenny’s 13 games to date. What would be the supporters’ verdict? It proved to be anything but frosty. Not even coy.

Maybe it was just the buzz of being back on Lansdowne Road but the atmosphere pre-game was positively giddy. Kenny beamed at the end of the national anthem as the crowd rushed in to drown out the last bars and Gavin Bazunu was serenaded by the mass behind his goal.

The warm round of applause as the home team took the knee fed into the sense that everything was going to be just fine and then the opening ten minutes was a blizzard of inventive and penetrative attacking movement from a revved-up Irish side.

This, you thought, was it.

Except it wasn’t. Azerbaijan eventually found their feet, Ireland’s initial surge dissipated and the majority of the opening half settled into a more cagey kind of affair with the eastern Europeans forcing Bazunu into his first real save after 23 minutes.

Ireland had their chances in the 15 minutes before time as they sought to rediscover some zing. It was sporadic, nothing like the effervescence of the opening spell, but it brought with it a promise of improvement and, who knows, maybe even a goal.

And then it came.

Emin Mahmudov should never have been afforded the space and time to unleash his opener from 25 yards out and the sweetness of the shot only reminded everyone present of just how rare such individual moments of class have been from their own.

That apart, Azerbaijan’s efforts at frustrating Ireland owed mostly to a backs-to-the-walls defensive shift and a propensity on the part of their players to slump to the turf at any and every opportunity. Playground stuff.

Still, Mahmudov’s moment of magic took on an even brighter sheen as the second half wore on and Ireland, regardless of a shift upwards in intensity and pressure, failed to engineer the required blueprint that would deliver an equaliser.

The frenzied nature of their efforts were summed up in Daryl Horgan who, on being introduced at half-time, gave the side an attacking edge it had lacked on the left while managing to kick the ball straight out of play three times.

And still they kept hammering at the door.

It’s been said before and worth repeating: Kenny can’t score a goal for his team but the manner in which they go about trying to do it will continue to split opinion. In that at least, this was anything like the 1-1 draws of previous times.

Ireland dominated possession, amassed at least 19 attempts on goal against a bare handful for the visitors who, it has to be said, did force some smart saves from Bazunu. Some things have changed, but too many remain the same.