Dara O'Shea: 'You either win or learn and we’ve done a lot of learning'

Dara O’Shea has played 39 times for his country, losing 20, drawing  eight - a record in keeping with everyone around him. 

Dara O'Shea during Republic of Ireland rraining, a the FAI National Training Centre, Abbotstown. Pic: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne

Take a microscope to the few remaining straws being grasped ahead of the Republic of Ireland’s last two World Cup qualifiers and any hopes of pulling off something miraculous don’t stand up to inspection.

Ireland’s supposed successes in frustrating Portugal in recent times have been clutched as one of these last refuges of encouragement, but if the team’s experiences with Thursday’s opponents tell us anything it might be just how little there has been to cheer.

Dara O’Shea played in all three of the meetings going back to September of 2021. All of them ended in defeat, two in admittedly unfortunate circumstances late in the game, the other in more straightforward and comprehensive fashion.

The worst was the first, when he broke his leg in that 2-1 loss in Faro.

“That was a game not to remember for myself, a tough time for me. I watched the rest of the game from the physio bed in the changing room, which wasn't ideal, and [it was] heartbreaking when we lost the game late on as well. Yeah, I tend not to look back on that too fondly.” 

O’Shea missed five months of football off the back of that. It was a spell that coincided with Ireland’s best run of modern times as Stephen Kenny’s side went on an eight-match unbeaten run. The defender returned just in time for the end of it.

How much did he actually miss, though?

There were four wins against Azerbaijan, Qatar, Luxembourg and Lithuania, half of them in friendlies. Not exactly a golden age for the Boys in Green, then, and that’s pretty much how it has been for this generation of players on the international stage.

O’Shea has played 39 times for his country. He has lost 20 of them, drawn eight. Of the eleven wins, the biggest scalp was Hungary (current FIFA ranking 27th). That was a friendly. The highest ranking ‘competitive’ win? Against a Finnish side currently sitting 72nd.

If that’s the body of O’Shea’s story then its DNA is almost an identical match to everyone around him and, whatever your thoughts on Heimir Hallgrimsson’s input as manager, he was on to something when highlighting the ‘weight’ of that green jersey right now.

O’Shea doesn’t gloss over it. He acknowledges the bad losses and the games that should have been won but weren’t. He comes into camp with big aspirations and a sense of responsibility. Any collective shortcomings aren’t for a want of trying.

“You either win or learn and we’ve done a lot of learning. I hope the lessons we’ve learned have put us in a better place. We really want to have success for the country, especially this group. We’ve been through some tough times and I hope we’re in a better place from it.

“As long as we’ve learnt the lessons we’ve suffered along the journey, we’re in a good place. I’m really looking forward to having success with this country. Everyone who puts that shirt on has massive pride, I know that I definitely do. Speaking to the lads, I can feel that.” 

There’s no denying the limitations of this Ireland group.

Only six of the 25-man squad plays in the Premier League, four of them regularly. Thirteen are Championship players and injuries have gutted options, not least at left-back and at midfield where the quality was an issue long before the quantity.

And yet, if a play-off spot is no more than a Hail Mary shot now, this is still a group where five of the eight games have been decided in their death throes with Ireland, on the balance of play, losing out over the full spread.

It wouldn’t have taken a seismic shift in fortunes for them to be sitting above Hungary now and holding the whip hand. Whatever happens against Portugal at home, and in Budapest on Sunday, that defeat to Armenia in Yerevan will stick in the craw.

“Apart from that game, I'm pretty happy with how we've played,” said O’Shea. “I think we're finding our identity better and better. Obviously, we've been affected a lot by players being absent, so we’ve needed to rotate, especially in the starting XI.

“But it's been a little bit inconsistent in my opinion, both the starting XI and then performance. Good halves, worse halves, and then it's probably that we've been talking about this game in Armenia. That's probably the negative thing in all of this journey.”