McCarthy not ready to concede

Mick McCarthy yesterday urged supporters to keep faith in the team in the wake of what was perceived as the Republic of Ireland's worst performance in years at Lansdowne Road.

A 1-1 draw which delighted Belgium's manager, Georges Leekens, as much as it disappointed the Irish support in a 33,000 crowd, is construed as conferring all the advantages on the home team in the return game in Brussels on November 15th.

In a show of defiance which some would liken to whistling past the cemetery wall, McCarthy is consistent on at least one point. This tie is still only at half way. And until such time as the last ball is played in the return match, he is not ready to concede.

"Even if we'd won by two or three goals on Wednesday evening, my line would be the same," he said. "There is still a lot of football to be played, still a lot of things which can go right or wrong depending on the perspective.

"We didn't play well on Wednesday whereas the Belgians have seldom played better. But who's to say that the permutation will be the same, second time around."

McCarthy is taking a short respite after the intensive build up of the last week to reappraise the situation in the light of the first leg game. And until such time as he has completed that exercise, he is not prepared to do any more talking.

If he is not in the mood for a morbid post-mortem, others certainly are and the consensus suggests that the tie has drifted beyond Ireland's reach and that urgent remedial work must be undertaken in the New Year.

Not everybody should be agreed, however that a 1-1 scoreline going into the return match, is necessarily ruinous for the Irish. True, a scoreless draw will suffice to send Belgium to France next summer, the fourth consecutive occasion they would have qualified for the finals.

Experience teaches us that it is difficult for home teams to defend that type of advantage, however, and that sooner or later, pride forces them on the offensive in search of a winner. And having chased the game with no reward on Wednesday, McCarthy's men could find it a lot easier and conceivably more rewarding, to play on the break.

Liam Brady, who was in the team which lost controversially in Brussels in 1981, is among those who who reckon that Ireland have not played as badly in Dublin for many years. Speaking on television, he said: "With respect to the players involved, this was probably the poorest Irish team I've seen in 15 years. There is nobody with flair in the side just now and it shows.

"For small countries like Ireland, good players come only in cycles and it may be some time, before we get a strong squad together again. But at 1-1, this particular tie is far from finished."

On the on going absence of Paul McGrath from the team, he said: "I don't know what it is between Mick and Paul or, indeed, if Paul wants to play again for Ireland. But all the reports suggest that he is still doing brilliantly for Sheffield United."

Brady is the second celebrity to call on the Ireland manager to look again at the credentials of McGrath, now 37 and missing from international football since the friendly game against Wales at Cardiff in February. Earlier, Frank Stapleton had gone on record as saying that McGrath still had an important contribution to make to the national team.

That the most decorated of all Ireland's international players is still a potent force, is scarcely in question. But the reconstruction of central defence where Ken Cunningham and Ian Harte performed creditably against the Belgians, ought not be a priority issue.

The bigger need by far, on the evidence of Wednesday's game, is for the the senior players in the team to perform to pedigree when they get to Brussels and provide the leadership which was so frequently missing in the first game.

The news of Keith O'Neill, battling to recover in time for the game, from a foot injury, is that he intends to have a full scale fitness test next week before McCarthy announces his selection. "I owe it to the manager and myself to give it a full blow out and at this point I'm still hopeful," he said.

On the invitation of McCarthy, Niall Quinn took part in the squad's training sessions this week but has still much work to do before he is fully fit. Like O'Neill, however, he is still clinging to an outside chance of making the deadline.

The FAI announced yesterday that an extra 1,500 tickets are being made available to Irish fans for the game in Brussels. This brings the total Irish allocation to 9,000 and has been made possible by renovation work at the King Baudouin Stadium finishing ahead of schedule.

It still falls short of the 12,000 required to satisfy all the Irish applicants for tickets and Belgians authorities again warned yesterday that for security reasons, only those Irish supporters who have acquired tickets through the FAI, will be admitted.