"Words can't describe what it was like out there," sighed a still shell-shocked Dean Delaney as he drifted, still dazed, towards the safety of the Irish dressing-room. Seconds later there'd be some harsh words exchanged in there, but what damage can words do when you've just been through something like this.

"All they had was four or five chances through the whole game and they've come away with three goals, it's unbelievable," said the Everton goalkeeper, who had some justification for feeling that the proceedings had been "sloppy" until the last few minutes when "we finally got our acts together".

"The thing was that their goals kept acting like kicks up the arse for us, which was something, and we did do well to keep coming back. But I just couldn't believe the way we were conceding things at our end."

Central to the fight-backs was team captain Gary Doherty, scorer of the third goal and provider of the crosses that led to the other two.

"It was a good return for me," he said with the hint of a smile, sneaking just a little display of satisfaction from an outing that was generally being considered a nightmare within the camp.

"I think I benefited from having a striking partner up there with me today, and maybe if I'd been a little sharper around the box I'd even have gotten another couple. But overall I don't think the situation is so bad. It's better than Cyprus at least, because there we were depending on other results going into the last game. Here it's completely straightforward: if we win against Italy we're in the final."

That might not have been his manager's preferred equation with a group game to go in this tournament, but as he reflected on a match that might have been won but which could, very easily, have been lost too, Brian Kerr wasn't complaining too loudly.

"They had to win it and we wanted to, and so what we got in the end was a mad game with loads of chances, some great goals and a couple of terrible ones," said the Ireland manager, . "I was pleased, though, that we kept chasing at it. There were some things that were disappointing, but up front the lads kept creating the chances and that's what pulled us through in the end."

Asked if he had thought that the game was lost when the Georgians took the lead again with three minutes remaining, Kerr maintained that "where you've had five goals in a game you can always have six."