MARTIN O’NEILL BLAMED a mixture of a poor first-half performance and some dubious officiating for his side’s failure to come away with all three points against Austria at the Aviva Stadium today.
The Irish boss was not quite as harsh on the referee as James McClean had been in an earlier RTÉ interview, but he labelled his performance “poor”.
“I thought we had a very, very tough first half, I thought Austria were better than us,” said O’Neill. “We had a very poor opening 15 minutes, put no real pressure on Austria and allowed them to get into the game, almost taking the crowd out of the scenario.
We couldn’t really create anything in the game, and I was a bit surprised about that because we had talked a couple of days ago about trying to get started very, very early in the game and try to be on the front foot, as I mentioned before.
“We conceded the goal, but I thought in the second half, we just put loads and loads of pressure on, loads of pressure helped by the crowd, and then there’s always a possibility of Austria scoring at the other end when you have so many attacking players on, but that’s the risk you take.
I’m delighted to have got the equaliser and I thought that we had a legitimate, good goal disallowed. The referee wasn’t totally to blame for our performance in the first half, but I thought he was very poor in the game.
“Considering he was letting things go during the course of the game — that’s fine, I like referees who let things go — but he seemed to be penalising us a great deal.
But Austria are still a very fine footballing side and we have to work really hard for anything that we get.
“In the heat of the moment, he’s going for it. The Austrian player is on the goal-line from a standing position and do you know, the spin of the ball if you just get a slight touch to it, as has happened, will take it into the net.
When (the referee) first pointed, I thought he’d obviously given it. The linesman is halfway up the pitch — he’s closer to me than he is to the game. Once or twice, I was close to him as well.
O’Neill also thought that an incident prior to the disallowed goal, where Jon Walters was taken down by Aleksandar Dragović, should have resulted in a spot kick.
“I thought it was a good goal and funnily enough, Jon Walters, it is a penalty, he’s caught his foot. Now it’s an accidental thing, but in this day and age, you see it in the Premier League all the time, somebody stops a chance.
Jon’s foot is caught and it’s inside the area, it’s a penalty. But we are still fighting.
“Their goal came as a consequence of a handball down the field. A couple of incidents — the (Shane Duffy) goal should have counted. It’s a big call.
We were fantastic in the second half in terms of energy and play and determination. And we had a legitimate goal chalked off. So the referee hasn’t been great for us.”
And an Austrian journalist, meanwhile, wondered how Ireland had taken four points off Austria when the visitors were “in football terms, such a better side”.
O’Neill, meanwhile, acknowledged there was a gap in standard in terms of some of the Austrian stars playing at a higher level.
You can take some of the team of the teams that the [Austria] players play for — Alaba’s at Bayern Munich, one of the best teams in European football who were a bit unlucky against Real Madrid in the Champions League.
“They have some very fine players. They brought a couple of younger lads into the side who acquitted themselves pretty well, so this was always going to be difficult.
I don’t get carried away with this here with 12 points on the board. It’s hard for us, it is and we can’t afford to take the time that we did to get into the game.
“But I have to say, let’s not be pessimistic now. I thought in the second half, we were really fantastic and Jon Walters epitomised the strength of character that we do possess in the side. We lack a few other things, but that’s not one of them.”
Meanwhile, Austria boss Marcel Koller was more diplomatic when asked about the officiating, claiming he didn’t see the disallowed goal and so couldn’t comment on it.
“It was a very intense game and we played especially well in the first half and managed to score,” he added.
In the second half, Ireland put us under pressure and we lost the ball too easily, but we still had chances to score the second goal. But we were also lucky not to concede a goal.
“There are still 12 points to earn in qualification and we will try to get as many as possible.
Ireland were playing at home and we think they are happy with the draw because it keeps us at a distance.
“We weren’t under so much pressure in the first half, but we knew the pressure would come.”
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