New Ireland forged in the crucible of Euros

EMOTIONS running high, they made their way to the corner of the ground where the Irish stood guard. A patch of green and orange amidst a sea of blue.

Players stood and clapped with tears in their eyes. It was a day of endings. The strands of different stories coming together and finding bittersweet resolution. Ireland’s Euro 2016 journey was at a close. Time to face the final curtain, no chance of an immediate encore.

For some of those players there is no chance of an encore, not in a competitive match. A testimonial matinee perhaps, but no more than that. John O’Shea, Shay Given, Robbie Keane. They’ve done their bit for king and country.

If anybody deserved to take the applause of a grateful nation it was them. Robbie Keane’s dedication to the old sod has been unstinting. Back and forth across the Atlantic from LA for years and years and for ever decreasing game time.

The time had come for others to take up the slack. The time had come for others to step up to the plate. At this championships they did, if only after a faltering start. In the crucible of Bordeaux a new Ireland was born. Or more accurately the old Ireland gasped its last.

It’s no criticism of those players, no slight against them to suggest it was the day when the need for change, the need for at least a partial regeneration became overwhelmingly obvious. Belgium won three nil. Honestly it could have been twice that such was the Belgian superiority.

Shane Duffy and Richard Keogh epitomise this new Ireland. They are the rocks upon which Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane have built and will continue to build their side. Duffy is 24, Keogh 29.

Plenty of years ahead for them to grow and develop. Plenty of years ahead of them to build on promising performances against Italy and France. Plenty of years ahead of them as Ireland seek a first return to the World Cup finals since 2002.

That has to be the ambition and given what we’ve seen over the past week or so it seems a realistic one. Bordeaux forced O’Neill and Keane to think anew about their midfield and having done so seem to have found a balance we’ve sometimes lacked.

Contrast the performances of James McCarthy in Lille and Lyon to those he gave in Paris and Bordeaux. Coming off the pitch in Bordeaux the Everton player looked a broken man, no way back for him surely after that.

Few expected – or wanted – him to start against the Italians in the final group game. O’Neill thought differently. Thankfully he did. McCarthy gave arguably the most assured performance of his Ireland career. For once it seemed as though he was a man and a player with a purpose. It was a performance reminiscent of the one he gave against Germany in Lansdowne Road. It was no coincidence that he was the man given sole responsibility for knitting the Irish midfield together on both occasions. In both games he manned the base of the midfield on his own, without Glenn Whelan along for company. It freed McCarthy to be the type of player Ireland always wanted him to be, the type of player he always had the ability to be. Whelan did no wrong during the championships, it was, nevertheless, the right decision to drop him. In the first half against France on Sunday McCarthy was, to a very large extent, over shadowed by Jeff Hendrick. Hendrick is the guy everybody is talking about. The guy with the athleticism and pace and an abundance of self-confidence, but without McCarthy could Hendrick be Hendrick? Whatever the case they made for a hell of a team against the French, who struggled for quite a while to cope with the sheer hunger for work and desire of the Irish in the middle of the park. Ireland led at half-time and led deservedly. France were outplayed. The boos and jeers of their supporters suggested that the Irish had gotten under their skin. Those delaying tactics – take a bow Mr Hendrick – showed the type of streetwise approach lacking in the opening two fixtures. There was a chance, a very real chance that Ireland, plucky little Ireland, were about to dump the host nation from the championships. Don’t ever forget that. That’s the important thing to remember and be proud of. That France are possessed of far deeper reserves and that Didier Deschamps was able to spring Kingsley Coman from the bench and switch everything up for the second half should come as no surprise to anybody. French superiority in the second half doesn’t undermine or negate just how well the Irish did in the first half, if anything it underlines it. O’Neill and the players got the very best out of themselves. They out-thought and out-fought a football powerhouse and they very nearly pulled off the shock of the century. That’s why the fans stayed in the ground so long after the game to serenade the Irish players with the Fields of Athenry. The fans understood better than most just how proud we should be of these players. Come on you boys in green. You’re not done yet.