Mark Lawrenson Soccer Analyst: Another rollercoaster. To be honest, after these two games you could say that, with a little bit of luck, we could be sitting in Group E with four points - the performances have certainly warranted more than two.

Having said that, after 42 minutes into the game against Cameroon we'd have happily taken a point and today, after 20 minutes, it was the same - actually, after 91 minutes.

A thoroughly deserved point - in all honesty, if it wasn't for a couple of world-class saves from Oliver Kahn we could have won it. I thought we played really well throughout the game - the nicest thing about it was we didn't panic, our football was extremely controlled from start to finish, which was great. Even when Niall Quinn came on we still tried to get the ball out wide and still tried to cross it from those areas, as opposed to 40 yards away, straight onto him.

Coming off the back of an 8-0 win the Germans were going to be confident and that showed in how they started. They stroked the ball around and got the goal, which was extremely well worked from their point of view. But I think, if anything, that just served to galvanise us again, just as the Cameroon goal did.

Their only really good spell was in the first 20 minutes and after that I thought they were largely outplayed. They were still quite dangerous and made one or two half-chances but, overall, we looked a better team than them.

Germany aren't a bad side, but they're not world beaters by any stretch of the imagination. Michael Ballack is still a very, very good player but he was quiet simply because we overran them in every department - in 75 per cent of the game we seemed to be stronger, faster and we just kept coming back and back and back. While other teams might have given up we just kept at them and we were rewarded.

After they scored they sat back, probably because they thought we couldn't play our way through them - but we did. I wouldn't say they didn't give us any respect but I think they thought we wouldn't be good enough to break them down and that they'd just lead us up cul-de-sacs. But, as we know, that certainly wasn't the case. They paid for that because they didn't really go on and look for the second goal which, if they'd got it, would probably have been enough.

At 1-0 down it was a bit like the Cameroon game. The attitude was that we had nothing to lose and we played exactly that way. But we kept our heads, played it through midfield, the quality of the crosses was good, the quality of the ball to the front men and to the wide positions was good and we had a lot of chances.

We know we've got spirit, everyone keeps going on about that now but we've had it for years and we always know we'll give anybody a game. The pleasing thing for me today was that we just kept trying to play the same way, tried to pass the ball - there was urgency, but there was no panic. There was always a game plan and the substitutions were good and made plenty of sense.

Damien Duff and Robbie Keane did well again. Duff is a real handful - the only question mark there'll ever be over him is whether he scores enough goals for a player of his ability, but he's still relatively young and he'll cause anybody problems, there's no doubt about it, he's got such great ability. Running at pace at defenders? No answer.

We did okay defensively. Obviously Ian Harte fell asleep for the goal, not a lot you can do about that, and there were one or two other worrying moments but, generally, if you compared the two defences I think ours was better - much better.

There's a nice balance to the team, left-footed players down the left, right-footed players down the right - it sounds an obvious point but it makes a great deal of difference. We moved the ball well, a minimum amount of touches, inventive in the last third, especially through Keane, Duff and Kevin Kilbane.

Matt Holland and Mark Kinsella play really well together, neither of them is a Roy Keane but they compliment each other perfectly, they don't ever stop - they must be hard work to play against because they're always, always at you. Both of them did really well again.

Again I'll make the point that the only slight disappointment for me is that we've drawn two games we could have won - we definitely played well enough to have come out with more than two points, but we've been a little unfortunate in the way that the ball has broken against us.

We've still a great chance of coming out of the group, though, and that's all Mick McCarthy could ever have asked for. Great start.