Platform in place for Paris stand

Switzerland v Republic of Ireland reaction: After a good night's work and a hard-earned point Shay Given made his way out of St Jakob Park in Basel last night satisfied. In stark contrast to this stage of Ireland's last qualifying campaign, the Republic are nicely placed near the top of their group.

"When you think back to last time and the two defeats we suffered, four points from two games is a good start," he said. "It's a good platform to work from and if we can go on now and give a good account of ourselves in Paris then there's no reason why we can't go into the new year in a very strong position to qualify."

The point secured last night was in no small part down to his own performance with the 28-year-old producing three good saves in five first-half minutes and wrapping up a fine display with a decent stop from Hakan Yakin's long-range shot with just over 20 minutes of the game remaining.

"It's what I'm there for," he said. "But I thought overall we played reasonably well and deserved the point. It was a good start but after we got the goal we seemed to take our foot off the pedal a bit. They put us under a fair bit of pressure in the spell and created a few good chances but after their goal I think we recovered fairly well.

"It was always going to be tougher than Saturday, we knew that and that's the way it turned out. But we coped well and it's very pleasing to come away from the place with something this time."

Late on the Swiss pressed hard for a winner but made little headway. "I wouldn't have been all that concerned at the amount of possession they had in the second half because they never really carved us open the way they had during that spell in the first half," Given said. "Late on I think we tired a bit but when Graham Kavanagh came on he helped to take the pressure off the defence a bit by sitting in there with Roy (Keane) in the centre.

"On balance I'd say we have to be happy with the point. Okay, we could play a bit better but we did have a couple of other chances. I think they scrambled one off the line, and if you get a draw away to a team like Switzerland then you have to satisfied."

News of Patrick Vieira's dismissal against the Faroe Islands had reached the players before the kick-off, as had the result from Torshavn where the French secured an unspectacular victory.

"They're a good side and we always would have expected them to win there but we watched a bit of their game on Saturday and I think the general feeling was that we could go there and do something. I wouldn't read too much into Vieira's sending-off, they have great players and they'll be able to bring in another experienced player when they play us. But we've a good squad too and we're certainly not just going there to make up the numbers.

"Apart from the Faroe Islands these are all going to be tough matches and Israel have shown they are capable of being right up there. If we can get something in Paris we'll be in a strong position. We're definitely going there to get a good result. We've shown tonight we can do that away from home."