Just a month ago, we were praising these same players for always giving it everything.
Having our World Cup dreams obliterated by a Denmark onslaught is depressing. The manner of our 5-1 loss made it even worse, and left the Ireland players more vulnerable than they’ve ever been.
We all went into Tuesday night’s game with a similar attitude to what we showed in the Wales game that qualified us for the play-offs. We held a sneaky suspicion that the fighting spirit we displayed that night, the fighting spirit that our players are famed for, might carry us over the line again.
That’s the fighting spirit that got us into a play-off ahead of Austria, and ahead of Wales – two sides that have players as good if not better than ours.
It all looked good up until the 29th minute. Shane Duffy scored a typical Shane Duffy goal, a typical Ireland goal. He put his cherished head where a lesser man wouldn’t and had us all dreaming.
We were comfortable up until that goal, that scrappy goal that put the tie at 1-1 but crucially had them going through on the away goal rule.
For whatever reason, the Ireland players seemed to panic from this moment onwards. Two unforced errors that nobody, not even Martin O’Neill could have planned for, cost us two goals. From then, on we were a beaten docket, needing two goals to turn the tie around.
The routine defensive clearances and blocks that our players are usually so good at weren’t happening as we began to chase the game. We were second to balls, our shape went all over the shop.
Denmark made hay as the sun shone, but had we held out for another 15 minutes, we would have all fancied our players to pull it off again like they’ve done in the past.
Christian Eriksen scored a hat-trick. He’s a world class player, the type of player that we don’t have.
It was uncharacteristic of the Ireland players to crumble like they did, but all teams and all players have off days. That’s a given in sport.
The Ireland players took some flak after the game, with some claiming the players showed a lack of effort, showed that they didn’t care and so on.
Fair play to James McClean; someone who actually cares. Robbie Brady, Ciaran Clark, Stephen Ward, Jeff Hendrick: hang your heads in shame!
— Seán Carroll (@Seannew1) November 14, 2017
Robbie Brady and Jeff Hendrick took more than most, and a quick search of their names on Twitter will give you a taster.
This was written in the Irish Times as a summary of Brady’s performance, and a search of his name on Twitter will supply many similar results.
“Rounded off a mediocre campaign with another sulky, nothing performance. His moaning might carry more heft if he put the odd dead ball where it was supposed to go.”
Brady didn’t have his best day in an Ireland shirt and cut a frustrated figure at times in the Aviva Stadium. He hasn’t lived up to the standard he set for himself in the Euro campaign, but don’t tell us this was because he didn’t care or wasn’t trying to do his best.
And Robbie Brady’s work rate tonight. Disgraceful. How about maybe sprinting across instead of shuffling like my granny to just stand in the way without making a tackle. Lille was last year. Move on.
— Conor Mackey (@Cmkey3) November 15, 2017
That’s one thing these players don’t deserve to be criticised for. So often in the past, like that Italy game, like the whole Euro 2016 campaign, they got the result they needed through outfighting more skilled opponents.
To win like this, you need luck and last night we just didn’t have it.
We were all over them then, saying they had done us proud by beating these wealthier opponents.
They haven’t changed overnight, they just had a bad day.
These players have given us some great nights, and they’ll probably give us more in the future, so there’s no point in kicking them when they’re down.
