Ireland v Hungary: talking points after a World Cup qualification fightback

The Boys in Green were two-nil down at the break. 

Ireland's Nathan Collins reacts to Referee Harm Omers. Pic: INPHO/Ryan Byrne

Stuck in the blocks again 

Heimir Hallgrimsson had bigged this one up. His assistant Paddy McCarthy had bigged it up. The players had bigged it up. FAI president Paul Cooke wrote in the programme about a palpable sense of anticipation. CEO David Courell went on about a renewed sense of optimism.

Even the stadium announcer talked about this one being “a night to remember”. So ‘big’ was the sense of hope and excitement that Hallgrimsson spoke on Friday about how calming his players down on match day might have been his main job. They weren’t calm to start, they were soporific. Ireland stank the place out.

Timid and nervous, they allowed Hungary the perfect two-goal start, one worse to concede than the other. That’s eight of Hallgrimsson’s nine games now where the opposition have opened the scoring. It’s also the third straight campaign where they’ve opened with a loss. Ireland simply have to stop shooting themselves in the foot like this.

Basic errors part of the problem 

Hallgrimsson had explained how he wanted his team to do some things better than anyone else, rather than be average at everything. Setpieces was one of these areas and you’d imagine basics like defending and keeping it tight at the back at the start of a World Cup campaign might have been others.

Or maybe not. Matt Doherty will take a lot of flak for his fish-out-of-water display at left-back but Nathan Collins and Dara O’Shea have to take the blame for allowing Barnabas Varga the freedom of Dublin for the first. That’s too many experienced players doing too many simple things badly.

Playing two right-footers on the left-side of the defence when there were more orthodox options will inevitably be questioned in the first place, but there is more than enough criticism to go around here and the players have to accept their share for what proved to be such a costly opening phase.

Improvement brings reward and more regrets 

Ireland showed signs of life the closer the game got to half-time, with Evan Ferguson burning the gloves of Denes Dibusz, but Hungary were complicit in opening this game up again. The goalkeeper made a mess of Ryan Manning’s free-kick in the lead-up to Ferguson’s goal and then Roland Sallai went and got a stupid red card.

The game ripped open at this stage, the two sides taking turns to try and add to the scoreboard but with Ireland having more of the possession and the better chances. All of that just adds to the frustrations from earlier as it showed how gettable this Hungary team (albeit with eleven players) might have been.

Those frustrations will linger even after Adam Idah grabbed a richly-deserved draw with his injury-time header. What looked like an impossible job in qualifying for next year’s World Cup when 2-0 down and stinking the joint out seems possible again after a night of gut-wrenching drama and emotion.