Late goal consigns Ireland to play-offs

Mick McCarthy may need some convincing that life's fortunes tend to level out over a period after watching his team concede a crippling goal in injury time for the second consecutive occasion.

Five weeks ago it was Davor Suker who plunged McCarthy into dark disbelief with the 93rd-minute score which gave Croatia a win which had often looked beyond them in Zagreb.

On Saturday, the timescale of disaster was more finely cut still, with just 12 seconds separating the Irish from their all consuming ambition of qualifying for the European Championship finals.

All the minefields appeared to have been traversed safely, all the crises survived when Goran Stavrevski delivered the goal which consigns Ireland to the lottery of the play-offs for second placed teams.

Not for years have we seen a more flamboyant headed goal, a typical defender's score. The pace of the cross and the timing of the contact, came together to propel the ball at breathtaking speed past Alan Kelly from well inside the penalty area.

One's immediate reaction was that it was less the product of careless defending as tired defending. Pointed fingers suggested that the start of Stavrevski's run had been spotted by two Irish players but neither managed to get sufficiently close to prevent him making the convincing, unrestricted header.

To be fair, only the second flowering of the talent which once established Kelly among the outstanding goalkeepers in Europe, had prevented the Macedonians scoring on two occasions in the preceding three minutes.

"When I look at the way my players performed over the last 12 or 18 months, I don't think they deserved to lose out on the chance of playing in the European Championship finals by just 12 seconds," said McCarthy.

"To be honest, I didn't think they played well here in Skopje. They didn't take the ball down, pass it round and take the sting out of the Macedonians' late attack as I would have hoped.

"That was disappointing. But we're still in the competition and if anybody had asked me when we started out in one of the toughest of all the qualifying groups, if I'd accept a place in the play-offs, I'd have jumped at the offer.

"Of course, perspectives changed along the way and we began to fancy our chances of qualifying automatically, as group winners. But let me stress again, we're still competitive, still there with a real chance of going to the finals."

That show of defiance fitted the character of a man who has never been fazed by challenge. And yet, as he came into the post-match press conference, he had the vague look of somebody who had just seen his dreams swept away.

The dressing-room talk, one sensed, had been gut-wrenching, perhaps even tearful. On his own admission the game against a Macedonian team which at times looked little more than a rabble offered his players their most obvious path to the finals.

Now, after defeats in play-offs for the last two major championships, the prospect of a third didn't fill the heart with joy. Neither was there much edification in the manner in which this game deteriorated into a shambles, with few precedents in international football in recent years, in the last 10 minutes.

At times, the abuse from the Macedonian supporters appalled even the most tolerant.

With the home team becoming increasingly desperate to pull back the lead which Niall Quinn had given Ireland as early as the 17th minute, the tackling became dangerously wild in the closing stages after the Macedonian manager Dragan Kanatlarovski encroached on to the touchline to object to a high challenge by Alan McLoughlin.

McCarthy appeared to follow him until he thought better of it but the effect was to ignite a tindery situation and set in train some ugly scenes in which studs showed with disturbing frequency and the timing of tackles became ever more erratic.

Even when the Spanish referee Fernadez Marin who, given the impassioned setting, handled the game with commendable integrity, sounded the final whistle, the abuse directed at the Irish dug-out continued apace.

At least two Macedonian players ran towards the Ireland manager, with fists clenched in a threatening manner while others rained verbal abuse on him as he made his way towards the dressing-room.

"I have no idea what I did to upset them so much but certainly in my experience of World Cup and European Championship football, I have never experienced anything like that," he said.

"Frankly, it didn't bother me greatly. My concern at the end, was that we had played into their hands by giving that goal away. But the bottom line is that while they have done Yugoslavia a favour, they themselves are out of the competition.

"We're still very much in it and that was the point I was anxious to make at the post-match press conference. It's a setback but hopefully, only a temporary one,".

Quinn's goal, which takes him to within one of Frank Stapleton's Ireland record of 20, caught the mood of a game which rarely fitted the standards expected at this late stage of the competition.

Antoni Filevski. Macedonia's third-choice goalkeeper, was lost in a thicket of players as Kenny Cunningham headed Gary Kelly's corner back across the face of the goalmouth. And after Quinn's first attempt appeared to hit the arm of Gopce Sedloski, the Sunderland striker, by now almost on his back, was luckier with is second effort.

That Cunningham should be centrally involved was apt, for together with Alan Kelly and Mark Kinsella, he was the best of the Irish on an evening when even the most proficient were often caught up in the mundanity of it all.

Gary Kelly, returning to the team on the right side of midfield, was markedly less happy, missing two good scoring chances one in either half, which would have made the game safe. And for Mark Kinsella, industrious without ever being inspirational in central midfield, there was the disappointment of a second yellow card in the competition which puts him out of the first leg of the play-offs.

Kennedy's curious substitution in the second half after some excellent skills on the left wing was one of the game's taking points. Another was the exciting return to form of Alan Kelly in goal.

After lanquishing in the slipstream of Shay Given for so long, Kelly is now Ireland's undisputed first choice in goal, a point he illustrated with two astounding saves from Georgi Hristov and Argend Bekiri in the closing minutes.

Those moments of supreme athleticism ought to have secured a precious win for Ireland. Instead, they merely succeeded in heightening the fall when Stavrevski launched his unstoppable header in the 93rd minute. Suddenly, it's tension time all over again in Irish football.