REPUBLIC OF IRELAND defender Nathan Collins has hailed John O’Shea and his management team as then curtain comes down on their interim tenure.
Speculation is rife that O’Shea will end up in the job on a permanent basis, but FAI senior sources continue to stress the Irish centurion is an interim appointment only and Stephen Kenny’s successor will be announced next month.
Collins reflected on O’Shea’s time as interim head coach after Ireland’s 1-0 defeat to Switzerland at the Aviva Stadium tonight.
“For myself, it’s been really good,” he told The 42. “I’ve really enjoyed him. I think what he has done and what the backroom staff have all brought across is really top-class.
“I can’t speak highly enough of him, I think he’s class.”
Asked about the input of technical director Brian Kerr and the rest of O’Shea’s staff, the Brentford man added: “It gives it a mix of experience. That’s good to have around the group.
“We’re still a learning group, of course, but bringing that experience… still having freshness, youth manager, youth staff, all hungry and ready to go. It’s a really good mix we have.”
Collins said tonight’s international friendly was “genuinely very frustrating”.
Xheridan Shaqiri’s 24th-minute free-kick ultimately settled matters at Lansdowne Road.
“I think it was a very good performance. From after the goal probably, we dominated a lot. We changed a bit, we got a better shape, we got after them a bit more and I thought we were the better team.
“I think we deserved something from it, I think we showed enough quality, I think we created enough chances and we defended well enough to get something out of the game.
“Ev [Ferguson] started off well and Adam [Idah] coming on, he was a nuisance. A lot of the subs changed the game and even from set-pieces, we were a nuisance. I think we should have scored a goal at minimum, but listen, it’s frustrating.”
“We know the quality he has and he punished us,” Collins added on Shaqiri’s effort, though he did think Dara O’Shea’s Burnley team-mate Zeki Amdouni went down easy.
“I haven’t seen it back, but I’m pretty sure it’s a dive. I think it’s really soft. The referee should be doing better in circumstances like that, but maybe it’s hard. I need to see it again.”
There were plenty of positives to take from the friendlies against Belgium (0-0) and Switzerland and the window overall, Collins concluded.
“You can see we’re a team that have a lot of confidence now. We can show what we can do against the big teams. We can go and dominate a game, we can go be a better team than teams like that. We can keep the ball, we can put high pressure [on], the next stage is just finishing them off and scoring goals.
“A lot of the lads, we seemed to have gelled a bit more this week. It was a stress-free camp, I think we learned a lot about each other on and off the pitch.”
