It was a night that started well for Shay Given, the veteran goalkeeper who returned against Poland to earn his 128th senior international cap, and finished well for Ireland thanks to Shane Long’s late equaliser.
Ultimately, though, it was no fairytale return as Slawomir Peszko’s first-half strike meant Ireland could only take a point when they needed three and that was what dominated the talk afterwards.
“I didn’t have much to do in the whole game, to be honest,” observed the Donegalman who started a competitive game here for the first time since the Euro2012 finals in Poland, “and the goal could have been avoided; it was our own doing really over in the corner, we could have cleared it a couple of times.
Two points
“But to be fair to the guy, he probably couldn’t have hit it any better. It flew off his foot and it was gone past me in a blur.”
That loss of two points leaving Ireland chasing qualification in much the way they had to chase this game but Given, somewhat inevitably, believes there are positives to be taken from the performance.
“Yeah, it’s a big point,” he insisted. “We’re disappointed, of course, with the first half performance. But we were a totally different team in the second, I felt.
“It’s probably the nature of the point, that it came so late with the goal, but it would have been really interesting if we’d got it five minutes earlier; we might have for a second had it not come a little bit too late but we created a lot of chances, hit the post and the crossbar a couple of times and on another night we could have snatched the win.
“The longer it goes on without the goal, the more you do think that it’s not going to come but we’ve a great group of players with a never-say-die attitude; we’ve scored a few late goals in this qualifying campaign and that shows the character in the squad and in the team and we deserve credit for always going to the death.
“With how late the goal has come, you’d probably take that as a point gained. We’ll have belief too going to Poland, especially after that second-half performance. . .”
Wes Hoolahan and James McClean both shared the goalkeeper's view that Ireland might well have pushed on to win the game if only the equalising goal had come that little bit earlier.
The pair may feel they did enough here to earn their places against the Scots and while Given barely made a save over the 90 minutes, he hopes that he will be involved again too.
“I’m delighted to have played tonight,” he said. It’s been great to be back in a qualifying campaign in front of a huge crowd. The atmosphere was fantastic as well.
“I didn’t have an awful lot to do tonight but it’s up to me to try to get in the Villa team again.
“I’ve got a cup semi-final coming up in a couple of weeks and there’s the England game in June as well and the Scotland game too so hopefully I can show Martin how good I am over the coming weeks.”
