No hard luck stories but hard work to be done

EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP/Group 10: Players' reaction: Emmet Malone finds the Irish team still in hopeful mood despite initial disappointment with last night's draw.

If most within the Irish camp had erred on the side of caution when asked what the team needed to achieve on this trip, Mark Kinsella had never left any doubt regarding his view that anything less than six points from the past four days would represent a blow to the Republic's chances of making it out of what looks increasingly like being an uncomfortably tight qualification group.

In common with many of his team-mates as they battled their way out of the chaos that passed for a mixed zone last night, however, the 30 year-old's disappointment with this draw in Tirana was softened by the news from Tbilisi that another of the group favourites, the Swiss - following the Russians last Saturday - had once again dropped points themselves.

"If you'd have asked me beforehand, then I'd have said we had to take maximum points but after the other result this evening you'd have to say it's all opening up," said the Aston Villa midfielder.

"It's eight, six, five, four now (points for Switzerland, Russia, Albania and Ireland respectively), there's a lot of games left and our next three are at home so I think we've got to be hopeful that we can be up there when it's finally all over."

While the Albanians, he insisted, provided no surprises at all to players who had been well briefed on what to expect beforehand, he admitted to feeling the effects of a second hard game in such a short space of time.

"Given the fact that the games were in two different places it really takes more than three days to get completely over the game that we played on Saturday. That team tonight was a better one than we played in Tbilisi, too, and we probably never fully adapted to the way we needed to play against them.

"They caused us problems with the three men in midfield and Mattie and myself had to work very hard to stop them passing it through us. We made it hard for the lads up front because we ended up playing too many long balls up at them, we didn't seem able to stretch them out wide and then get the ball in to Robbie and Duffer.

"But you have to hand it to the Albanians tonight, they kept possession very well and made us work very hard to try to win it back.

"We didn't create too many chances, not as many as we would usually hope to, and they were good going forward. But I thought our central defenders and goalkeeper were outstanding tonight."

For Robbie Keane it was a hard night to end a difficult 10 days and the 22-year-old striker admitted afterwards that more than once he had found himself out there with thoughts of his father passing through his mind. "I think it's only natural that anyone in the situation would be like that but you just have to try to put the thoughts aside and get on with it.

"To be honest I felt all right out there although after only playing one game last week and then the lack of training since, there was no way that I was ever going to play the 90 minutes.

"At half-time," he added, "Brian just said to keep going because I don't really think that we were doing anything wrong but they kept it very tight at the back and it was very difficult for us to create anything. In the end we managed to carve out a couple of chances but couldn't make any of them count."

Late on, of course, there were a couple of occasions on which the players felt that they had managed to snatch the away goal that would have dramatically enhanced their prospects of a top two finish in this group.

In particular, there was the time Gary Breen's header hit the back of the net six minutes from time. There was considerable anger that the referee's assistant raised his flag for offside.

"Yeah, we thought at the time that it was a goal," sighed Matt Holland as he made his way out of the stadium, "but somebody's just come in and told us that they thought it was offside on TV."

No hard luck stories, then, but plenty more hard work to be done when the campaign resumes at Lansdowne Road with the visit in early June of last night's opponents and Georgia.