Looking on the bright side

Players' quotes: An hour before kick-off, the choice of Monty Python's Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life by the hosts had seemed like an odd choice of tune with which to welcome the Irish into Moscow's fine new Lokomotiv Stadium.

An hour after the final whistle, though, the song's central message had become the main theme of the visiting side's reaction to their defeat.

One after the other, Mick McCarthy's players emerged from their dressing room to chat about "drawing on the night's positives" and "building on the good points of the performance".

Pressed to elaborate on what these were, the number of scoring chances created in what was a remarkably open game emerged as the main straw being clutched at.

Like the rest of his team-mates, Jason McAteer was doing his best to remain upbeat, despite having just been involved in the worst beating that most of these players have ever experienced in international football.

The Sunderland midfielder conceded the unarguable, that it had been a fairly miserable evening, but was vague about where the team had fallen down, preferring instead to talk of the players' collective responsibility - apt enough as it happened, given that almost all of them had played so poorly.

McAteer, though, was realistic about the game's wider implications, pointing out as his manager had done, that if the return leg is won then this game will go down in the record books as a fairly ordinary - if somewhat high scoring - case of one of a group's big teams losing to another away from home.

What is important between now and then, he insisted, is that the team manages to bounce back from the defeat and recover their form for next month's now vitally important visit of Switzerland.

"Obviously, it's been a bad experience," he said "but the thing is that it's up to us to make sure that it's not all bad. I think we felt like we'd just been knocked out in the dressing-room there, we're very disappointed and that feeling will stay with us for a while.

"But maybe the fact that it's brought us down to earth, reminded us that we're not unbeatable, will end up counting for something.

"Everybody always talks about the fact that when Manchester United get beaten nobody wants to be the next team to play them.

"That's what it's got to be like with us now. We've got to pick ourselves up and make sure that Switzerland feel a bit of a backlash."

Though the first-half goals left the Irish chasing the game and having to work as hard as they have done in any recent outing, the former Liverpool and Blackburn player maintained that they had never given up on getting something out of the contest.

"We made a lot of mistakes and that's probably what handed the game to the Russians rather than any great number of chances that they were creating. But maybe because of that we always felt that we were in with a shout.

"We got the goal to go 2-1 and then gave a stupid goal away but then they went 3-2 and we were still chasing the game, I mean, at that stage, you're either going to get the equaliser or concede another - unfortunately for us we ended up letting in the fourth, which was a real killer."

As it happened, McAteer himself played quite well, particularly in the first half when his work to retrieve the ball and running while in possession were two of the fairly positive aspects of the Irish team performance.

His movement away from the right side of midfield appeared to add to Steve Finnan's problems, though, as an attempt to draw the Russian wing back into a man-marking role pretty much backfired due to the freedom it allowed their left-sided midfielder.

"Well, the intention from our point of view was to tie the wing back up a bit and it felt like it was working in the first half because even when I went over to the left side for a bit he came right over with me, which was a bit of a compliment, really.

"From a personal point of view, I was enjoying it at that stage, really flying, but I ended up coming off injured in the second when I felt my hamstring tightening. We'd agreed before that if it happened I'd come off as a precaution and that's what it came down to in the end."

Gary Doherty admitted that the team had defended poorly over the course of the game, a flaw he said that was probably caused by "a lack of concentration".

"There was some sloppy defending, all right, but then if we'd taken our chances we definitely feel that we could have taken something from it."

He, at least, took one of the chances that came his way, to score his second goal in 11 senior international appearances.

Even in the circumstances, he was entitled to draw some small amount of personal satisfaction but the 22-year-old could manage none.

What did he take out of it? "Mmm, not a lot really." Much the same as the rest of us then.