Instinct to attack keeps us in chase
NOTHING is straightforward with this team. They refused to accept a seemingly grim fate and capitalised on a miserable weekend for Scotland to become relevant in Euro 2016 qualifying again.
Yet the good times are not uncomplicated, either. With a quarter of this match to play the 25,000-odd in the ground were entitled to believe that Georgia’s chippy resistance had been softened. On taking the lead, though, Ireland did what they usually do now in such circumstances: they became reticent and lost the bullishness that gave them the lead in the first place.
Thankfully the Georgians had exhausted themselves in the first period and could bring no threat to bear on the Irish goal. However, it was another taut and sweaty night in the hardscrabble world the Irish soccer team now inhabits.
This victory came against a team who are the watery side of limited.
We knew the Georgians by their haplessness. The only break they got in Group D was the company of Gibraltar, who saved them from being its worst team.
Their win over the Scots last Friday mattered because of its repercussions for Ireland, but in Scotland it also mattered because Georgia were opponents who carried the guarantee of at least one point and the promise of three. They were the tomato cans who floored the Scots.
They were largely unfamiliar beyond their expected limitations. Zurab Khizanishvili constituted glamour, given a past that included time spent at Rangers and Blackburn Rovers. As the first half bore on, though, their technical ease was apparent. First-time passes were a given, and by half-time they had as much reason to believe in victory as the home side.
John Delaney had blazed across social media on Monday morning but there were no scandalous vapour trails on this occasion. Instead, he was captured beaming with Kilkenny manager Brian Cody and coach Mick Dempsey on Sunday evening as the supreme sporting force in Ireland celebrated its latest glory.
This sporting ecumenism was heartening and associating with such a successful operator was surely instructive.
Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane were present at the hurling final, too, but whatever lessons they absorbed were from a less giddy vantage point than the one Delaney enjoyed after the match.
Even from seats in the Croke Park heavens, however, it was possible to understand the relentless determination of Kilkenny to destroy Galway attacks and create their own. O’Neill and Keane must have appreciated the extraordinary tightening of Kilkenny’s control as the second half wore on.
Like predators who know the precise moment at which to strike down bedraggled prey, the hurling men knew when it was time to attack. When Ireland appeared for the second half with Shane Long replacing Robbie Keane, it marked O’Neill’s determination to trigger similar instincts in his players. The half-empty Aviva Stadium reacted to the news with a half- cooked cheer, as if their recognition of what seemed a positive substitution was tempered by the magnitude of the switch.
Keane is 35 and he moves in accordance with his age but there is no goal- scorer better who is available to O’Neill. But when Ireland pinned the Georgians against the edge of their box in the quarter of an hour after the game resumed there was noise and expectation in the ground.
The Georgian captain, Jaba Kankava, had been the most accomplished player on the pitch in the first half but he was one more retreating red jersey as Jon Walters poked a header wide and Jeff Hendrick saw his deflected shot shooed away by Georgia’s goalkeeper, Nukri Revishvili.
It was a much more dramatic atmosphere but even in the midst of that drama Ireland’s reduced circumstances were palpable. A match against Georgia should not whistle and spit with tension like this. Georgia are the world’s 147th best team, according to FIFA, behind Aruba and one place ahead of Curacao.
Their visit should not balloon into a drama of this order.
James McCarthy hoofed a couple of breaking balls way wide of the Georgian goal as his strange struggle in green continued. Few players have endured the criticism he did to wear a national shirt, but he plays as if the weight of those controversies has been transferred into his Ireland jersey.
He works like a systems’ man, nudging passes on, taking possession to move it on. Given his reputation and his speculated worth in the English game, McCarthy needs to provide ends and not means.
It was after an ugly McCarthy hack that trickled wide somewhere between the corner flag and the left hand post that Ireland finally scored, the tangling Walters spooning in at the near post after a fine, j i nking r un and cross f r om Hendrick. It was deserved, the climax of 20 minutes of I ri sh pressure.
That Irish dominance was the consequence of much more urgency, underlining again that a team with limited technical skills can compete more effectively through proper application and tactical awareness.
The arrival of Long helped in that regard, but a bewildering failure of this group instantly emerged on scoring the goal: the inevitable retreat towards Shay Given with yards of space left behind for the Georgians to attack. Glenn Whelan and James McClean were correctly booked for idiotic dissent and rash tackling respectively as hard-won advantage was threatened as much by self-harm as the reawakening of a Georgian presence in the match.
The win was shakily collected and this jumpy campaign rattles on.
We then saw the inevitable retreat back towards Given