Ireland fortunate luck is with them

It was, said Don Givens afterwards, another disappointing performance, but the Irish under-21s still managed to beat Cyprus in Larnaca to keep their European Championship qualification hopes alive. "In the circumstances," sighed the Ireland manager, "I'll take that".

Both sides enjoyed good early chances to open the scoring in a contest that the Irish simply never got a grip on, even after they had scored the game's only goal. It was a controversial decider, though, with Givens admitting that his side had been lucky it had been allowed to stand.

After Andy O'Brien had stuck away Jason Gavin's downward header from Colin Healys' corner it wasn't entirely clear whether the Cypriots were more put out by a suspected foul on their goalkeeper or O'Brien's high studs as he finished.

The Ireland boss felt the dangerous play might have cost them the goal, while, from the stands, the keeper appeared to have a pretty decent case.

Still, the goal stood and while the locals were clearly angered by the decision it turned out that there was worse to come for them 11 minutes before the break when Stefanos Voskaridis, a persistent thorn in the side of the Irish back four, got clean in on Joe Murphy who appeared to bring the striker down as he was rounded.

Far from giving the penalty, though, the Romanian match official - who was well placed to see the incident - booked the Cypriot for diving.

Ireland's two debutants Richie Foran and Stephen Reid both drew decent saves from the Cypriot goalkeeper, but the side's best chance to score from open play had come back in the ninth minute when Michael Reddy had carried the ball for some 60 yards and shaken off two challenges before striking his shot within easy reach of the outcoming Chrysostomou. It was the best chance the Sunderland striker - currently on loan with Swindon - missed, but not the only one.

At the other end, Elias Charalambous made a remarkably similar error when the Irish central defence was caught off guard, one of several times that well-timed passing moves left O'Brien and John O'Shea scrambling back towards their own goal.

"The strange thing is," remarked Givens, "that in a way it's actually encouraging that we can win with a performance like that.

"That's not," he added quickly, "to say I'm pleased at all with the way we played out there because a lot of our key players had a very poor day which I find difficult to explain."

CYPRUS: Chrysostomou; Michael (Kyriacou, 78 mins), Theofilou, Ilia, Kkaras, Charalambous; Kavazis, Charalampidis (Louka, 68 mins), Konstantinou; Voskaridis, Garpozis (Christou, 61 mins).

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: Murphy (Tranmere); Gavin (Middlesbrough) (Byrne (West Ham), 83 mins), O'Shea (Manchester United), O'Brien (Newcastle United), Clarke (Stoke City); Healy (Celtic), O'Connor (Stoke City), Quinn (Coventry City), Reid (Millwall) (Quinn (Sheffield Wednesday), 64 mins); Reddy (Sunderland), Foran (Shelbourne) (George (Luton) 68 mins).

Referee: D Tudor (Romania).