Gavin Cooney reports from FAI HQ, Abbotstown

HEIMIR HALLGRIMSSON SAYS his Irish players must react to their World Cup play-off semi-final heartbreak as if it were a car crash, and thus use Tuesday’s friendly with North Macedonia to get quickly back on the road. 

Ireland must play the loser of the other play-off semi-final, North Macedonia, on Tuesday in order to fulfil their broadcast contract. Hallgrimsson says it’s useful to play the game to return to action and begin wiping away the memory of Prague. 

“It’s always good to play national games, just to continue improving”, said Hallgrimsson at Ireland’s training base today. “It’s like a car crash: if you are driving and you crash a car, the best thing to do is to go back in a car and drive, so that [the] effect kind of wipes away. 

“It’s probably similar in this case, it’s good to have a game after this to try to correct what we can correct, move on, and that is one of the things that we need to work on, because we haven’t played a lot of big matches in the past. We just need to grow from this. If you play big games – and we like to play big games – if they don’t go the way you want, then it’s big losses. It’s a big hole in your heart after games like this. So that’s the thing, when you play big games you have big losses, and we would like to move on from this and learn.”

Sammie Szmodics has returned home and while he is doing well after his hefty collision against Czechia, he will not be available on Tuesday. Jack Taylor is doubtful: he has returned home as his wife is unwell. He may return to the squad ahead of the North Macedonia game. There are no plans to call in any additional players. The squad returned to Dublin in the early hours of Friday morning after their penalty shootout heartbreaker, and Hallgrimsson gave the squad the day off. 

The squad trained today, and Hallgrimsson began the day with a “closure meeting”, debriefing the Czech defeat to point out what the squad must do better. 

“The road to success is never a straight line, there will always be set-backs”, he said. “But to grow you need to recognise the set-backs, you need to own them and you need to correct them, that’s how you grow as an individual or us as a team.” 

While he says the overriding emotion after Prague remains pain, he took heart from the connection between players and supporters in the immediate aftermath of the defeat. 

“Seeing what happened after the game, after the loss, when everybody is disappointed, to see the connection between the people and the players, I just absolutely love it”, he said. “It’s unique and please don’t lose that uniqueness in you.” 

Hallgrimsson plans to give opportunities to fringe players on Tuesday night as, regrettably, the road to Euro 2028 begins earlier than had been hoped. 

“Now we have a good time to plan and prepare and find players and do other things as well”, said Hallgrimsson. 

“It would have been nice to have whole months together with the national team and I said on the airplane back, I don’t know what I will do in the next two months, I have absolutely planned every day, so now it’s a big space to fill.

“So yeah, just use the time ahead constructively but don’t lose what we have gained in the last two years. I think we have taken good steps. Again, I am biased, but I think we’re taking good steps and we just have to be focused on continuing to take good steps in the right direction.”