`Just clinging on' at the end

For Denis Irwin these days it seems like the implausible, maybe even the impossible, is steadily coming to feel just a little like the run of the mill.

Two late goals to win the European Champions League at the start of the summer and an even later Davor Suker strike till stand starkly out in the Corkman's memory. Now this. "These days," he says "I'll believe anything can happen in football".

If Saturday's last-minute equaliser provided another astonishing twist in Irwin's remarkable year, though, he also believes quite firmly that it left the Macedonians with the result that they deserved from the contest.

"Personally, I don't think that we deserved to win the game. I wouldn't say that we created many clear-cut chances, we were very nervous and in the second half we seemed to stop passing the ball.

"As it went on, with the pressure building, we were defending deeper and deeper and in the end we were just clinging on.

"It was," he added "still a close run thing but we've had to settle for the play-offs. We would have settled for that before the group started so we shouldn't get too worked up about this game. But as regards the draw to decide who we meet now there's a couple that we'd probably prefer to avoid . . . Ukraine, Turkey and England are all strong and it would probably be better to steer clear of them."

In front of him for most of Saturday's 90 minutes, Niall Quinn claimed to have seen the game somewhat differently with the big Sunderland striker apparently feeling that a little luck was all that the Republic were missing on the night.

"There was a problem in so far as I think that we reacted badly to going one up. We should have gone for the kill at that stage but I think a bit of nervousness crept in. I think we'd been smelling the European Championships before the game and maybe because of that we just got more and more anxious.

"In the end, though, we could have done with a little bit of plain old luck. Nothing much went right for us in attack and when I think of the two last-minute goals that we've conceded I don't know whether to laugh or cry."

Like his international team-mate, the Sunderland striker has his preferences about who we end up playing in the next stage of the prolonged qualification process but more important from his point of view is the order in which the matches are drawn.

"I think that there was a slightly awkward feeling last time when we played the Belgians in the first game. Nobody knew exactly what we needed to do and it meant that there was a lot of uncertainty.

This time it would be much better to get the away leg over with and come back to Lansdowne Road knowing exactly what it is that we need to do."

Also attempting to look forward with a sense of perspective was one of the weekend's few Irish heroes, Alan Kelly. For a few short minutes it appeared that the two magnificent saves the goalkeeper made would be enough to keep the Republic on course for automatic qualification. Then came that corner.

"The fact is, though, that that is in the past now. It's hard at the moment because the game is only just over and everybody is struggling a bit with what has happened but England, Scotland and the others will go into the play-offs with bags of enthusiasm so its vital that we do the same."

Kelly shares Irwin's view that when the agony of Saturday's disappointment subsides a little the overall performance of finishing second in such a tough group will be viewed with a little more perspective. But, in the cold Macedonian night, the Blackburn Rovers man was finding it as hard as anyone to put things in context just yet.

"Really I can't believe how close we've come to qualifying. None of us could when we came off and heard how the other game was going. It's all the harder to cope with because of the way that the whole thing has come about . . . I still can't believe that it's happened all over again.

"After the Croatia match, though, we said that we had to pick ourselves up in time for the match with Malta and the bottom line is that we managed to do it. Now we have to do it again. It's not going to be easy, but we have to be positive. We can do it again and we can still make it to these European finals."