Republic hotshots fail to sparkle

The facile comment after Northern Ireland's first success in 20 years over the Republic and their first ever in Dublin was to ascribe the upset in form to the indifference of players to end-of-season friendly games.

That is valid to a point and when you add in the apathy of a crowd numbered at just 12,100 for the Omagh peace testimonial and a playing surface which didn't meet the requirements for international football, it is easy enough to be scathing of the scoreline.

Yet, Mick McCarthy may be unwise to dismiss in full, the disturbing evidence of a bankrupt performance which even in its better moments, contained little of the merit of the earlier warm up games against Paraguay and Sweden.

With as many as eight of the players he intends to send out against Yugoslavia next Saturday included in the starting line up, this ought to have been a stroll against a northern side, cobbled together with such haste, that Lawrie McMenemy may have been hard pushed to name his players.

Local derbies are rarely like that, of course, and now as he watched his high profile team reduced to a rabble, McCarthy may have questioned the merit of a fixture which, in spite of the worthy cause, held predictable pitfalls.

He will, I suspect, have been troubled, in particular, by the puny contributions of Damien Duff and Robbie Keane, two of the emerging players around whom he has built so many of his aspirations.

The hangover from Blackburn's relegation, may have accounted for Duff's anonymity before being replaced by Keith O'Neill early in the second half. The bigger disappointment by far, however, was Keane's inability to get on the same wavelength as his front line partner, Niall Quinn.

Quinn, as is his wont, won almost everything in the air and while many of the knockdowns were misdirected, he was entitled to feel mildly alarmed by Keane's repeated failure to get anywhere close to him after the hard work had been done.

The extra motivation which will attach to the European championship game, may bring the young Wolves striker to a higher pitch but at this stage, the manager will surely be looking at the option of starting with O'Neill, either on the left side of midfield or as an out and out striker.

After another season fragmented by injury, O'Neill produced a couple of aggressive runs to suggest that, given the opportunity, he could be capable of wreaking some damage on the Yugoslav defence.

Mark Kennedy's switch to the right wing, often looked ill advised and in those circumstances, it was left to Mark Kinsella to bring some semblance of composure to a midfield formation which, in spite of good possession, was rarely capable of summoning the skill to open up a forthright defence.

If neither full back, Steve Carr nor Alan Maybury was overly adventurous, they discharged their primary responsibilities satisfactorily and with Steve Staunton and Ian Harte out, Carr almost certainly did enough to warrant his first competitive start next Saturday.

For Northern Ireland, it was a welcome bonus at the end of a season of recurring disappointment. Unlike Jack Charlton before him, McMememy came to international management late in life, with little realistic hope of moulding his squad into potential winners.

That was down in the first instance to the lack of genuine quality at his disposal and now bereft of the services of as many as eight of the players whom he would regard as first team material, he can only have feared for his chances of escaping another defeat.

In the event, his improvised team, containing only one regular Premiership player, Neil Lennon, did him proud. Central to their survival was the ability of Barry Hunter and Mark Williams to hold the defence together and in spite of Quinn's supremacy in the air, they were sufficiently abrasive to ensure that either Maik Taylor nor his replacement in goal, Roy Carroll, was unduly troubled.

Lennon, always available to join up defence and attack, did well but generally, it was the performance of Keith Rowland which gave real quality to the midfield line. As a striker of the ball, Rowland was in a class apart on Saturday, delivering some telling crosses which on another day might have yielded a heavier harvest.

Iain Dowie, enthusiastic as ever, presented problems for Kenny Cunningham and Phil Babb in the air but it was his frontline partner, James Quinn who spurned the best chance in a pedestrian first half.

When Dowie directed Rowland's cross directly onto this head in the 33rd minute, the opening goal beckoned. But in keeping with much of what went before and after, the West Brom player, merely succeeded in hitting the side netting.

That was a reprieve of substantial dimensions for the home team and yet it did not quite compare with their escape in the 53rd minute after Adrian Coote, the Norwich striker, had taken over from Dowie at the front of the team.

The Republic's central defenders were marked conspicuously absent when Jon McCarthy arced a cross to Coote at the edge of the six yards area. But with the net yawning in front of him, the replacement somehow managed to miscue the simple header to the point where it missed the target by yards.

That didn't augur well for the prospects of breaking an increasingly obvious stalemate but with just seven minutes left, Danny Griffin, only in the game as a 79th minute substitute for Lennon, finally succeeded where all else had failed.

It was scarcely a classical build up with the ball being played in speculatively from the left but as Alan McLoughlin prepared to clear, Griffin's boot was the first to make contact and the shot from 25 yards cleared Shay Given's head before dropping into the net.

The finality of the move contrasted starkly with the Republic's ineptitude in front of goal. Niall Quinn marginally mistimed the header from Keane's cross in the 14th minute and later McLoughlin's surging run invited a better finish by the Wolves' player.

Yet it wasn't until the 74th minute that they threatened after Kinsella, pivoting nimbly on Kennedy's pass, had chipped the shot over goalkeeper Carroll.

But in keeping with the pattern of a game in which little went right for them, the ball caught the crossbar and in that moment McCarthy may have sensed that he was headed for his fourth home defeat since coming to power three years ago.

Republic Of Ireland: S Given (Newastle Utd): S Carr (Tottenham), K Cunninham (Wimbledon), P Babb (Liverpool), A Maybury (Leeds Utd); M Kennedy (Wimbledon), L Carsley (Blackburn), M Kinsella (Charlton), D Duff (Blackburn); N Quinn (Sunderland), R Keane (Wolves). Subs: A McLoughlin (Portsmouth) for Carsley (45 mins), K O'Neill (Middlesboro) for Duff (56 mins), D Connolly (Feyenoord) for Keane (56 mins), A Cascarino (AS Nancy) for Quinn (72 mins), G Kavanagh (Stoke City) for Kinsella (82 mins).

Northern Ireland: M Taylor (Fulham): D Patterson (Dundee Utd), M Williams (Chesterfield), B Hunter (Reading), A Hughes (Newcastle Utd): J McCarthy (Birmingham), S Robinson (Bornemuth), N Lennon (Leicester), K Rowland (QPR): J Quinn (West Brom), I Dowie (QPR). Subs: R Carroll (Wigan) for Taylor (45 mins), A Coote (Norwich) for Dowie (45 mins), D Johnson (Blackburn) for Rowland (74 mins), D Griffin (St Johnstone) for Lennon (78 mins).

Referee: K Richards (Wales).