It was by all accounts his time to step forward but despite opening the scoring against Serbia Shane Long was left frustrated by his role in the first defeat of Martin O’Neill’s tenure.
Long had been tasked by O’Neill with putting his stamp on things in the absence of captain and record goalscorer Robbie Keane.
At the age of 27, his opportunity to lead the line in a new qualification campaign began last night, but after haranguing Branislav Ivanovic into a timid backpass in the seventh minute before calmly slotting past Vladimir Stojkovic, nothing quite went right for him after that as Ireland surrendered the ascendancy and lost 2-1.
With Wes Hoolahan in behind him, the pair dovetailed beautifully at times, Long expertly staying onside on two occasions to be found with pinpoint accuracy by the Norwich man. On both occasions, however, the Hull striker failed to deliver. “It’s frustrating you know, I thought I did a lot of things right you know and caused them a few problems but sadly it will be remembered for the two misses I had.
“Nine out of 10 times in training you’d take them and sadly they didn’t go in for me today. It’s nice to get a goal, nice to play up front with Wes as well, I think he enjoyed setting me up and it’s a striker’s dream when you have someone like Wes behind you.”
His attempt to slide the first chance home was thwarted by Stojkovic who then smothered the rebound, before Long rushed a lob in the second half, clipping it wide of the upright.
On both occasions, Long had, perhaps, too much time, such was the quality of Hoolahan’s delivery. “I don’t think there’s such a thing, it’s nice to have that amount of time on the ball. I should have finished it, there’s no denying that. It’s frustrating but I can take a lot of positives from it.”
He added: “I think the second chance I had the keeper gambled you know and read me like a book. And the third I just kind of dragged it a little bit but I’ll learn from it and luckily it wasn’t in a qualifying game. It’s a friendly tonight and the gaffer tried out a few things and hopefully I gave him a few things to think about.”
Hoolahan was happy to be supplying the ammo for Long and insisted the "goals will come along".
Forde disappointed
Predictably, David Forde was disappointed to have ended a game in which he had generally done well having conceded two goals. "It started out with so much promise," he acknowledged. "Longy scored a fantastic goal, a great finish and we should have closed out the game but they've managed to capitalise on a sloppy start to the second half. They've hit us with two sucker punches; which was disappointing."
The goalkeeper was at a loss to explain the mid-match transformation in Ireland’s fortunes although he pointed to the terribly condensed preparation. “I think it’s hard when you’re just meeting up after coming in and you have two day’s training and there’s been some changes; it can be difficult but yeah, we’ve still got to come out and do better in the second half.”
There were, he insisted, positives to be taken from the game, not least some of James McClean’s early running but by the end, he admitted, there was mainly a sense of how much needs to be done between and the start of a qualifying campaign. “Well, it just brings you back down to reality,” he concluded.
Serbia skipper Branislav Ivanovic, said: “We started the game with too much respect. We knew the qualities that Ireland had but we started in a confused way. After that we played a controlled game, we kept going, played hard and took our chances. After that it was much easier for us to control the game.”
