Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
World Cup heartbreak
Randolph: If the match goes to extra time so be it... I’ll be ready to stop and score them
DARREN Randolph is using the two days between play-off games to study Denmark’s potential penalty takers.
If Saturday night’s first leg of the World Cup play-off is anything to go by, then another stalemate may ensue into extra-time tomorrow night.
Ireland’s players, including Randolph, are intent on making home advantage count by booking their ticket to Russia in normal play but they’ve already started planning for all e ventualities.
“I haven’t been involved in a penalty shoot-out since I was 14 years old playing at the Milk Cup in Northern Ireland,” said the stopper, who also said he’d be willing to take a spot-kick in the shoot-out.
“Of course, we’ll be concentrating on the first 90 minutes and, if it goes to penalties, so be it.
“You’d be silly not to have a study of their penalty takers to have some sort of idea. I would do normally to that before every match to get some idea of where they tend to aim.
“The last one I saved was last season for West Ham against Bournemouth.
“I did save one from a teammate in training the other day but I won’t name who missed!”
Martin O’neill was thankful to his goalkeeper for keeping the Danes at bay in Copenhagen.
The Middlesbrough man came to the rescue by turning Yussuf Poulsen’s late header over for a corner, albeit the Denmark substitute admitted afterwards he should have aimed for the bottom corner with the effort.
“I think I got a bit of luck being in the right place at the right time,” said a modest Randolph.
“I expect to be busy every game and Denmark had the majority of the possession. We managed to get a couple of chances ourselves but we have to happy with this situation.
“It’s win or bust now in Dublin. We’re the home team and have to get a result but we’ve managed to do just that before.
“The main thing from Saturday was that we didn’t the play-off over after the first game.
“That’s three clean sheets in a row and we’ll be solid again on Tuesday, hoping to nick a goal.”
Not for the first time in this campaign, Ireland came in from some flak for their lack of creativity on Saturday.
Randolph, O’neill’s No 1 for the past two years, insisted the battle of attrition was always likely given the high stakes on offer for both teams.
“You can’t go away and try and win the game in the first 10 minutes, or even in the first half,” he explained.
“I mean you have to keep yourself in the tie for the second leg and give yourself a chance.
“We know, however, that there’s a lot more to come from us and with the crowd pushing us on, we’ve got to believe we can win this game.
“We’ve a fair idea of what to expect from Denmark. They have some good players but so do we and the mood is good in the dressing-room.
“It’s a home tie to qualify for the World Cup and everyone is determined to get there.”