Connolly issues reminder

Republic of Ireland - 2 Turkey - 2:SOCCER/International friendly:The club money men who spend their time campaigning against these sort of matches may yet come to cite the rather bizarre second half of last night's game at Lansdowne Road as further evidence friendlies should be consigned to history.Emmet Malone reports from Lansdowne Road.

Republic of Ireland manager Brian Kerr, however, will take some persuading that David Connolly's outstanding first-half goal wasn't worth all the effort while his Turkish opposite number, Senol Gumes, will surely leave Dublin suspecting if Rustu Recber isn't fit for next month's vital European game with England he and his players might as well open talks on what terms of surrender might be available from their Group Seven rivals.

Kerr had predicted an open, attacking game beforehand and from very early on it became apparent the two teams were going to deliver on this. Through the opening stages, though, it was the Turks who repeatedly posed the greater threat with Tayfun Korkat testing Nicky Colgan's nerve after a couple of minutes and then narrowly missing the target with the shot from the right side of the area.

The visiting side's best chances, during a strong opening spell, came in the eighth minute when Hakan Sukur failed to control Alpay's finely-weighted ball over the Irish defence and Tuncay Sanli shot well over from just inside the box.

With all but a couple of last night's starters having been first choices at last summer's World Cup where the Turks finished third, it seemed the Irish were going to have their work cut out avoiding a rare home defeat. During those opening exchanges the home side struggled to bring their strikers into the proceedings as they were again smothered in midfield where, as always, Kevin Kilbane and Mark Kinsella showed their industry.

Then, with less than a quarter of an hour played, Gary Doherty won a throw in midfield from which Colin Healy played a wonderful long pass into the path of Damien Duff who neatly took control of the ball before slipping it past Rustu Recber. His celebrations were cut short as he was harshly judged to have been offside.

The ease with which such strong defence had been opened up must have boosted Kerr's players but it wasn't until the closing stages of the half that they began to exert some sustained pressure on their opponents and it was Connolly who threatened to steal the show. The 26-year-old's goal, 10 minutes before the break, was a splendid example of the sort of thing he seems capable of doing regularly at club level but rarely manages in a green jersey since the earliest days of his international career.

Having beaten Alpay in the initial chase to reach a Gary Breen ball, the Turk briefly appeared to succeed in pushing his man wide only for Connolly to turn inside and release a right-footed shot that flew between the two defenders and into the bottom right corner.

Moments later, after Doherty had this time embarrassed Alpay, Connolly might well have had a second goal but for the Donegal man's decision to take aim at the bottom left corner instead of playing the ball inside to his unmarked team mate.

And Connolly went close again within three minutes. The Turks partially cleared an Irish corner as Breen challenged in the air, Duff attempted a shot and the West Ham striker arrived just fractionally late as Rustu pushed the ball wide of the target.

With there still being a situation vacant in the Irish attack ahead of the trip to Switzerland next month, those four minutes or so may yet prove important to a player who has promised a good deal over the past few years but delivered little when given his chance.

Duff found himself playing in another of the positions that poses Kerr some difficulty these days, the right side of midfield, his fourth role for the Republic in his last four internationals. By his own standards it was a subdued performance with neither his speed nor his extensive bag of tricks proving enough to really open up the visiting back four and the Chelsea winger made way at half-time for Steven Reid with the identity of the next occupant of Ireland's number seven shirt no easier to predict.

Quite how much can generally be learned from the second half of friendly games when the number of substitutions tends to completely disrupt the pattern of play is debatable. Last night's second period, however, was especially bemusing with the Turks again starting strongly and equalising after six minutes through Hakan Sukur after which the game descended into near farce.

For the crowd of 27,200 there was certainly some amusement to be derived from it all with Omer Catkic, a 62nd-minute replacement for the injured Rustu, producing what must have been 25 of the worst minutes ever managed by a goalkeeper at Lansdowne Road.

The Bazlantepspor player caught the crowd's eye when he almost managed to turn a Harte cross into his goal in what seemed like a straightforward situation to deal with. By the time he had left, replaced three minutes from time by Zafer Ozgultekin, he was well on the way to gaining cult status with the Irish supporters.

Briefly, it seemed as if Joe Murphy wanted to get in on the act on his senior international debut with the young goalkeeper at one point blasting a clearance off Ibrahim Uzulmez after which Sukur almost headed it home.

Omer can at least say he didn't concede a goal, however, and a minute or so before he departed his side took the lead when Sukur's fine ball from the left was defended in much the same way the Irish resisted Switzerland's successful attempt to grab a late winner when the Republic last lost at home. Okan Yilmaz slipped through the Irish defence apparently unnoticed and Murphy barely had a chance to react as the ball was pushed low towards the bottom left corner.

From an injury-time corner Richard Dunne was let away with an obvious handball before driving home from six yards to level things up again. And the home side were then fortunate when Okan Buruk's close-range header was wrongly disallowed for offside in the fourth and final minute of added time.

IRELAND: Colgan (Stockport County); Finnan (Liverpool), Breen (Sunderland), O'Brien (Newcastle United), Harte (Leeds United); Duff (Chelsea), Healy (Sunderland), Kinsella (Aston Villa), Kilbane (Everton); Doherty (Tottenham Hotspur), Connolly (West Ham). Subs: Reid (Blackburn Rovers) for Duff (half-time), Dunne (Manchester City) and Murphy (West Brom) for O'Brien and Colgan (74 mins), Morrison (Birmingham City) and McPhail (Nottingham Forest) for Doherty and Healy (87 mins), Carr (Tottenham Hotspur) for Harte (90 mins).

TURKEY: Rutsu; Fatih, Alpay, Bulent, Ergun; Tayfun, Emre, Tugay, Sas; Tuncay, Sukur. Subs: Okan Buruk, Deniz and Ibrahim for Alpay, Tayfun and Sas (all half-time), Omer for Rustu (62 mins), Gorkdeniz for Emre (62 mins), Ahmet for Tugay and Okan Yilmaz for Tuncay (74 mins), Umit Davala and Zafer for Bulent and Omer (87 mins).

Referee: J Wegereef (Netherlands).