FAR FROM hiding behind excuses, Keith Andrews was refreshingly candid when assessing Ireland’s performance against Brazil last night. Ireland weren’t good enough to live with the five-time world champions in the second half. Simple as that.

And having dented his own side’s ambitions with an unfortunate own goal just before the break, no one was more disappointed than the Blackburn Rovers midfielder to see Ireland disintegrate at the Emirates Stadium. “It was definitely a game of two halves,” he reflected afterwards. “The first half, I think we played fantastic stuff and really stifled them and we were probably the better team.

“We really deserved to be 1-0 up rather than 1-0 down. The second half was maybe a case of them upping their game. But we didn’t play as well and we were a little bit casual at times, myself included. It was a poor second half for us, really.”

With the hysteria of last November still lingering in the Irish psyche (something about Thierry Henry and a handball, apparently) certain sections of the media are never too slow to spot a potential controversy. And with Robinho apparently offside in the build-up to Brazil’s first goal, conspiracy theorists across the country were sharpening their pencils. But Andrews, while insisting the former Manchester City winger was in an offside position when he delivered the killer ball, put it down to one of those things.

“I was actually the closest to Robinho when he was making his run in behind me,” he explained. “So I just let him go assuming the flag was going to go up. But again (as at the Stade de France), it didn’t. It’s just one of those things, hopefully we’ll eventually get the rub of the green.”