THERE’S BEEN PLENTY of criticism after the Republic of Ireland’s 2-2 draw against Serbia in Belgrade on Monday evening.
Despite showing character to come from behind and secure a potentially vital away point, much has been made of the team’s inability to build on their early lead and how their wasteful ball retention allowed the home side dominate the rest of the game.
But former captain Richard Dunne feels that as much as the performance was lacking, the most important thing was the result.
“There’s disappointment when you go a goal up after a few minutes and you think ‘Brilliant. This is a whole new era, everything’s going great’ and then for the next 65 minutes we can’t get out of our half”, he told The42.
You’re coming from the high of the Euros and how enjoyable that was to a match in a soaking wet Belgrade, an empty stadium and also a bit of an unknown with them. It was always going to be a hard match to play in.
Everyone has been criticising the performance and saying it wasn’t great. At the end of the day, the most important thing is getting a point on the board. And I think it’ll be a good point come the end because Serbia seem to be a good side and seem to have improved on what they’ve been like in previous campaigns. It’ll be a difficult place for Wales and Austria to go to.”
After the side’s relatively surprising Euro 2016 odyssey and the way certain young players excitedly stepped forward and grabbed the limelight, maybe there’s a new-found expectancy. Something Dunne feels is unrealistic.
“I think everyone looks at the Euros with rose-tinted glasses and thinks it was brilliant and it was wonderful and it wasn’t”, he says.
It wasn’t that good. We did well. We got a good result against a second Italian team, really, and we were hammered by Belgium. We played really well against Sweden for a while, then we scored and sat back. In the France game, we scored and people got tired. We lost our shape and got run a bit ragged. There were periods in all games where we passed the ball nicely, and periods where we hit the ball long.
But because it was so positive and we got caught up in the whole thing, it was ‘a really good tournament’, and it was ‘a successful tournament’. But if you were to analyse the games individually and then look at the Serbia game and if you add the atmosphere and the situation to the Serbia game, you’d say ‘Well, look, we got a draw against Serbia in a European tournament and we fought back, it’s great’.
Qualifying is a different beast to a condensed, sharp tournament where games come thick and fast and momentum can be infectious. Qualifying is arduous. Mostly, it’s not very pretty. Pragmatism reigns supreme.
“It’s two years! In two years we won’t even remember this match. It is about grinding them out”, he says.
Now, it’s just about the point. Performances don’t matter. It’s been the same for Ireland as long as I can remember. You never go anywhere and hammer anyone. It’s always been about the grind, the battle and picking up points in unexpected places – getting lucky draws or lucky wins. That’s the way it will be – a battle all the way through. There will be games where there’s a goal in it or we’ll take a draw. That’s the way it is. And that’s what we’re good at.”
Tuesday was the fifth anniversary of Dunne’s famous display in a crucial Euro 2012 qualifier against Russia in Moscow.
That day, it was about the tough slog. The dogged determination. The relentlessness to just get over the line.
It’s an Irish thing. The iconic individual displays we remember aren’t the hat-tricks or the glorious goals. Here, we favour Paul McGrath bossing Roberto Baggio at the Giants’ Stadium and Roy Keane against the Netherlands at Lansdowne Road.
Dunne enjoys how the memory stirs a national pride within him.
“All the young kids watching football now that are growing up and want to play for Ireland…as much as they want to score goals like Robbie Keane or have silky skills like Damien Duff, when they look at the big results Ireland have had and say ‘How did they do that?’, well every one of them threw their bodies on the line and defended and kicked and tackled everything that moved.
That’s the one defining thing about the Irish team for the last 50 or 100 years. And it’s probably the one thing you can always rely on going forward. Players will come and go – they’ll have different skills and abilities, but they’ll always have that one trait of being an Irish fella: you never give up and you fight for everything.”
Richard Dunne was speaking at the launch of SSE Airtricity’s #PowerOfGreen research findings which highlight the achievements the nation is proudest of. More more information, you can visit www.sseairtricity.com.
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