“We’ve got tears in the dressing room” – Ireland U21s distraught after controversial late equaliser

Late drama at Turners Cross has put Ireland's hopes of qualifying for Euro 2025 in jeopardy.

Deep into stoppage time, the Boys in Green looked to have secured their play-off spot, but a moment of madness in the Ireland half flipped the game on it's head.

As Irish defender Anselmo Garcia MacNulty attempted to defend the ball from the approaches of Sindre Walle Egeli, the Norwegian clearly pulled McNulty's jersey and took control of possession.

Despite the cacophony of cries from the home fans at Turners Cross, the referee allowed play to go on, allowing Andreas Schjelderup to put the ball past Gateshead goalie Tiernan Brooks.

The resulting 1-1 draw means that Crawford's men will now have to travel to Trieste to face Group A leaders Italy on Tuesday needing a win to seal automatic qualification.

A defeat on the other hand, coupled with a Norwegian win over Turkey would see the Irish squad miss out on the consolation prize of a play-off place.

"It's a tough one to take. We've got tears in the dressing room, we've got a lot of disappointed players," he said.

"But the thing is we need to recover quick. We need to get ourselves mentally prepared now because we've got a huge game against Italy.

"The last game we played against Italy here, they scored in similar circumstances. It's just something that we need to get better at, seeing out a game."

On the controversial decision not to award Ireland a free kick in the build up to Norway's equaliser, Crawford added: "It's just hugely disappointing because they weren't causing us too many problems.

"Sometimes we left the outside channel a little bit open when we jumped too soon which caused minute problems but nothing that we didn't take care of.

"You're going into injury time and we're conceding again, so it's a tough one to take."

Italy U21s vs Republic of Ireland U21s kicks off at 5:30pm on Tuesday evening.