Forging ahead with optimism

N Ireland 3 Poland 2:LIKE ALL Northern Ireland football folk Jonny Evans is feeling ever increasing good vibrations. The Manchester United defender might have been keen to avoid posers about his club's consecutive Premier League defeats but there was little reluctance regarding what could be happening to the nation's major tournament famine.

“We’ve been working really hard and the spirit’s been great which it always is,” he said after this win against Poland.

“But there was something about this week. I said to my dad when I was on the phone to him that I had a good feeling about it and we’re really confident,” he said, offering himself up as the team’s mystic. No appearance in any finals since 1986 has been little fun.

Yet Nigel Worthington’s determined men now have 10 points and Slovenia, who managed only a draw with the Czech Republic on Saturday, are due on Wednesday.

Trailing Northern Ireland by two points, they have played a game less. The attentions of a Windsor Park crowd, who will bay and wail through the Belfast evening, should inform Matjaz Kek’s team talk – expect Slovenia to set up for a successive share of the spoils.

“It was a great atmosphere and Jamie Ward just said to me that you wouldn’t see an atmosphere like that anywhere else,” Evans said of that home support, who had taken a careful route to the game through trouble from the Polish fans – apparently taking on the riot police in this manor is a lesson in prudence – which continued to be very bloody into the night.

In Evans and his team-mates’ veins, though, is the pulse of a promise of a fourth consecutive victory in these qualifiers.

“We’ve done really well and hopefully we can take that into Wednesday,” said the 21-year-old, whose second-half finish from Grant McCann’s corner was a first competitive international goal.

Artur Boruc might wonder if he should burn his gloves. A definite declaration of his religious affinity in the club shirt of Celtic had caused unpopularity in these parts which led, with unsavoury logic, to a death threat ahead of kick-off. The Gods then decided he should take a wholly injudicious swipe at Michal Zewlakow’s 61st-minute back pass. A nasty bobble – Paul Robinson will have gone green – did the rest and that was 3-1.

It came after a first-half in which Warren Feeney scored early before Ireneusz Jelen levelled beyond Maik Taylor on 27 minutes.

There was also a late second for Poland from Marek Saganowski. But an equaliser would have been unfair.

Evans stonewalled on the tricky issue of his club’s mini-slump. “I’m playing for Northern Ireland not Man United.

“It’s totally different and a different country and I’ve not even thought about it.”

Another chap with only thoughts for the future was Gerry Armstrong, whose strike against Spain during the 1982 tournament sealed Northern Ireland’s most famous victory.

He was overheard debating Group Three with definite optimism. And why not? Worthington’s men have a clear sight of South Africa 2010.