We've seen a few sides of Brian Kerr over these past couple of seasons but the joy with which he has previously greeted the spectacular successes of his international teams was a million miles from the emotional disappointment of yesterday's defeat. "You could ask for no more," said the Irish boss as he fought to get the words out and keep the tears in. "What could you say about them? I feel so sorry for them. They were very brave.

"It was backs against the wall stuff from a good while but they hung in, especially after the Nigerian goal when they were really struggling but we won a game on penalties last summer which made us European championships and today we've lost one that means we go home from this competition."

Having paid tribute to his players and complimented the winners on the way they had achieved their victory, Kerr said that he didn't want to get into the issue too much of how the game was refereed but he was clearly having difficulty containing his anger about the issue.

As Noel O'Reilly stood a few feet away expressing his bewilderment about his own sending off, Kerr said that he was equally perplexed by the match official's leniency when Gary Doherty had been taken down by the Nigerians' last defender. But that decision, he said, had set the tone for the evening and by the time the Chinese officials had waved away Robbie Keane's appeals for a penalty in the first period of extra time, he knew just what to expect.

"It was obvious after the first one that we weren't going to get too many free kicks in their half, never mind penalties. I don't want to sound like this is sour grapes now but if you look back at their first game, their goalkeeper should have gone twice and we've seen it again here today.

"The fact is that people want them to stay in the competition and that's why the referee didn't do what he should have out there."

For O'Reilly, complaining about his sending off "seems a little bit selfish when you look at what the lads are going through, but I still can't believe what happened. First we have a player (Thomas Heary) actually ordered from the pitch because his shin guard had fallen out. I mean I'd never seen anything like that before, and then Gary's taken out and the ref. does nothing.

"Of course I was angry about it. No matter what FIFA might say you can't watch football sitting down if you care about it - there were 15,000 people there tonight and how many of them were sitting - but to send me off was amazing . . . it wasn't even as if I was on a warning or anything."