Squad will be keen to finish campaign on a high

The players won't let it be a damp squib, they'll want to go through in a blaze of glory in front of a full house, writes PAT FENLON

THEY’VE BEEN professional and have shown the opposition some courtesy when talking about tonight’s game, but deep down the manager and the players – and supporters – know they’re through. We don’t concede many goals, so it’s hard to see us conceding five.

But you want to finish the job on a high, the players won’t let it be a damp squib, they’ll want to go through in a blaze of glory in front of a full house. And I expect them to finish the campaign on a high, maybe even winning as comfortably as they did in Tallinn.

There’s a buzz about soccer again. We lost a bit of ground to rugby and GAA over the last few years because it’s all about success.

The rugby team has had that bond with the public because they’ve enjoyed good times, but it’s been nearly 10 years since the soccer team qualified for a tournament.

There’s a whole generation of young kids who have had no experience of that, certainly no memory of Euro 88 and Italia 90, which were the ones that really got the nation going. And economy-wise, it’s a similar situation to back then, if we can get the same kind of boost it would be great for everybody, give the country a much-needed lift.

So, those kids can now identify with the players the way we did with the team from 1988 and ’90, and hopefully it’ll encourage more of them to play soccer. It’s the largest participation sport in the country, but there’s been a generation missed in terms of experiencing that level of success and excitement.

I’ve been critical of him at times, but Giovanni Trapattoni deserves great credit. His remit was to get the team to Euro 2012, and it looks like he’s done that.

He came in, had a look at the players at his disposal, came up with a way of playing that they bought in to and have been comfortable with. It’s not a complicated way of playing, but it needs a lot of hard work and high concentration levels. He got that from them, they bought in to what he’s preached.

And it’s never easy when players are coming in from different clubs and different levels, it can be hard to create that degree of togetherness.

He’s managed to do it. What stands out is that there’s a unity within the group, they believe in the manager and they believe in themselves.

Success, of course, is measured by results, not by how you perform, but I still think there’s more in these players than he allows them express.

When you look back at that night in Paris they showed what they could do – we were the better team on the night, against smashing players – because of the way we approached the game, the way we kept and passed the ball. That’s why I still believe there’s more in this team.

But the pressure is off them now, there won’t be as much expectancy at the finals as there was in the qualifying campaign, so maybe they’ll relax a little bit more and with the belief they’ll have now feel freer to express themselves.

Our biggest weakness is that we keep giving the ball away cheaply, and against the kind of opposition we’ll face in the finals we’ll be punished a lot more than we were by some of the weaker teams we played in qualifying.

If you’re up against the likes of Spain or Germany or the Dutch you just can’t give the ball away like we have done. We saw how many problems Russia caused us in both group games when we did it. There’s time to work on that now, in the friendlies. He’s a wily manager, he’ll know that has to be dealt with.

The players, of course, deserve great credit too, especially the likes of Richard Dunne, Shay Given, Damien Duff and Robbie Keane, who have been exceptional for us. When we’ve asked these players to come and play, whether it be in a friendly or a competitive match, they’ve turned up, every time. You just have to look at the amount of caps they have between them. Not every country can say that about their leading players.

So, these players deserve to be at another major tournament, and hopefully they’ll stay on after that to help bring some of the younger players through for the World Cup campaign. But if one or two decide Euro 2012 is going to be their swansong, there’ll be no better way to end their international careers.

It would be a richly deserved finale.