Players see light at end of tunnel

The lights went out in the players' tunnel just as Jeff Kenna was insisting Ireland's World Cup qualifying hopes were still alive. Was it a sign? Nobody could bring themselves to draw the analogy.

It was a tunnel full of very long players' faces. One after another they filed out of the dressingroom and tried to talk about a game they would rather forget.

"It was Liechtenstein revisited, wasn't it," said a frustrated Alan McLoughlin. "You can't fault the commitment of the players, it was just that final . . . God, there were some great chances there. Yeah, Liechtenstein revisited to be fair. But we're still in it - win our next three games and we have a chance."

Andy Townsend tried to look on the positive side, too, but it was hard. "We've been through that sort of a night so many times before, we didn't get a break, we had chances but we didn't put them away.

"They're not bad to be fair, they're quite lively, but I think our boys gave everything they had - you couldn't have asked for much more from anybody, it wasn't for the want of trying. "Listen, that's the way it goes, it's over and done with now. We can talk about it forever but at the end of the day, it ain't going to change anything. It's about looking ahead now and looking for three wins out of three. There you go, what I can I say, really? Lost for words. Come two weeks' time in Iceland we'll be out there again, busting our gut and hoping this time one runs for us."

Man of the match Roy Keane was at least happy with the team's performance, but conceded that wouldn't help them move any closer to a place in the World Cup finals. "Another disappointing result but I'm sure everyone will be happy with the performance - although that's not much good to us, we wanted the three points. We have to hope three wins will be enough for us now."

"We always do it the hard way, even at club level I always seem to do it the hard way but it keeps it interesting for the fans, I suppose. We definitely deserved to win tonight, we created so many chances but it wasn't to be."

And how come he didn't flare up when a group of angry Lithuanians took him on in the first half? "You don't get involved, do you," he grinned. "It took me 26 years to learn that."

Steve Staunton did his best to keep the mood in the tunnel upbeat. "We created an awful lot of chances, we were just unlucky. It just wasn't going to be our night, was it? We were happy at half-time, we felt we'd ridden the storm in the first 15 minutes but after that we were in control. Second half? We totally dominated but just couldn't find the back of the net."

Did he think they were ever going to score? "Of course we did, that's why we kept going forward. Look, we've always done it the hard way, it keeps you on your toes, keeps you writing for another few months. As long as we beat Iceland, that's the first step, especially with them winning tonight, it's important that we win that game and then take it from there."

"It was very disappointing, very disappointing, but at the same time we can look back and take some good things out of the game, especially the number of chances we created. We'll just look forward to a good trip to Iceland and we're confident we can beat Lithuania away, we're certain of that because they'll have to come at us a little bit more and leave a few gaps at the back."

Were the players lacking sharpness so early in the season? A glare and a definite "no". "If you look back over the years we've always done reasonably well at this time of the season - at the end of the day it's not as if we played badly or anything, it was just a bit of bad luck and a bit of bad finishing in front of goal.

"I think everyone was out of their seats when Ray (Houghton) got his head on the ball at the end - David Kelly thought it was going to come back off the post and he was there to just tap it in, but it wasn't to be. It comes down to millimetres at the end of the day, unfortunately the ball didn't bounce for us tonight."