While Irish skipper Roy Keane preferred not to share his thoughts on Saturday night's game after the final whistle - he was shielded from waiting journalists by security men as he departed - Kevin Kilbane did best to capture the sense of disappointment in the camp.

The hope had always been to build up a cushion of more than one goal ahead of what promises to be a difficult away journey. Still, after Robbie Keane's goal 10 minutes from time, even the slender advantage had looked fairly attractive before it was snatched away again.

The penalty was, of course, a talking point for all of the players and Kilbane, like most of his team-mates, was claiming that the Swedish referee had been hard on Lee Carsley for what was, it was argued, an unavoidable accident.

"From where I was standing, I thought it was very harsh," remarked the West Bromwich Albion winger, who was amongst the best of the Irish performers on the night. "Lee was on the ground and as far as I could make out the ball just rolled onto his arm as he was trying to get up. Clearly, though, the referee interpreted it differently and gave the penalty and there's not a lot that we can do about that."

The blow was made all the harder to take by the fact that Ireland had finally made the breakthrough at the other end that eluded them for most of the game. The goal, said Kilbane, was "tremendous" and Robbie Keane's finish "magnificent", but all of that had been somewhat overshadowed by subsequent events.

"It's hard," he said "because we dominated the game, created a hell of a lot of chances and I thought we should have been going to Turkey with a victory under our belts. But it hasn't worked out that way, so now everybody is very disappointed, and rightly so."

Niall Quinn was missed, he remarked, and the Turks had been difficult opponents, but not so difficult that the match should have been won. "They set out their stall out there tonight, but we knew what to expect. They didn't really attack us, but they had the big lad, Hakan, up front who was awkward. He was a handful at times, but I thought that we coped with him quite well and really they didn't cause us too many problems over the course of the 90 minutes. "They didn't have too many shots on goal, nowhere near as many as us and overall I felt that we were quite unfortunate not to come away with a victory."

With his own performance, he admitted, he was reasonably pleased - although not nearly as happy as he would have been had one of his attempts on goal beaten goalkeeper Rustu Rencber. "I started quite well and had that right-footed shot, but the 'keeper did well and he pulled off another decent save from me in the second half. It's a little frustrating not to have had a goal myself coming off there at the end."

Had either of the 22 year old's strikes found the net then the task for Kilbane and his team-mates on Wednesday night would certainly have looked a good deal more straightforward. As it is, the young player's attempt to rationalise what lies ahead did little to camouflage the difficulty of the task.

"We know what we have to do now," he suggested. "We know we have to score out there now, and even if they score we're back to square one really. . . because we have to do the business anyway."

If only, you thought to yourself, it was nearly as simply as that.