END JUST THE BEGINNING
We’re in a great place ahead of road to Russia, insists O’Neill
ALITTLE after 1pm yesterday, Martin O’Neill, clad in a smart dark suit, bade a cheery farewell to the staff at the Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles and boarded the Irish team coach for the final time at the Euro finals.
Flanked front and back by police motorbikes, the coach spearheaded a 17-vehicle convoy bound for Charles De Gaulle Airport.
The 2016 Euros moves on with eight teams still standing, most of them heavyweights whom O’Neill knows well; Germany and Poland from the qualifiers, Belgium and France from these finals.
In fact, two sides who defeated Ireland could meet in the final for the second European Championship running, with Belgium and France still on course to clash in the decider. In 2012 the final was contested by Italy and Spain, who overcame Ireland in the ‘Group of Death’.
O’Neill would love to be among the eightteam elite here, punching above his weight, like he did as a player with Northern Ireland in the 1982 World Cup.
‘At this minute, this morning, it feels like an ending,’ he said yesterday.
‘Honestly, it does, it’s over. I thought that if we could beat France, we would have a week’s rest,’ he said.
‘I had already planned my days in Juan Les Pins,’ he added with a wee quip.
The absence of ‘rest’ for his players between the final Group E game on Wednesday night and the last 16 tie with France on Sunday afternoon irritated O’Neill hugely.
The hosts had a massive advantage in terms of preparation and it stood to them in the second half in Lyon where they could dip into their reserves of energy while Ireland were on the needle and guilty of sloppy errors.
O’Neill acknowledged the manner of the goals conceded on Sunday was a ‘disappointment’ but preferred to build up his players yesterday rather than point any fingers.
He spoke of the younger brigade, chiefly Jeff Hendrick, Robbie Brady and Shane Duffy, and how they not only felt they belonged at international level but had gone further by ‘doing something about it.’
‘When I first saw Jeff when I got this job, he spent most of his time getting the ball and playing it back, getting it and playing it back,’ said O’Neill.
‘And I just said to him, “You’ve got to get turned. Get turned and get at people, you’re strong.”’
Hendrick and Brady — the latter the subject of a reported £12million transfer enquiry by Leicester City yesterday — were always pivotal to O’Neill’s Euro strategy but he cast a wider new by throwing Duffy, and James McClean too, in from the start in for games three and four.
Was that always his intention to be so radical mid-way through the tournament?
‘Looking at the timetable and schedule, if we had got four points in the first two games I was definite, I would have changed the side around,’ he said. ‘I was always going to use a few extra players and that game against Italy demanded, to begin with certainly, a new energy. Some of the players were slightly older than others and needed a breather.’
So did he feel vindicated when those changes paid off?
‘Do you know what? You have to live or die by the things that you do so if you say that I’ve been vindicated then fine.’
‘I think the younger players have kind of taken a bit of ownership and thought “it’s our time, our time’ and they stepped up and performed brilliantly.’
‘Do I think we should go into the World Cup with decent confidence? Yes.
‘Do I think some of the players have performed incredibly? Yes, absolutely.
‘We’re back at it in a couple of month’s time and it’s a long gruelling campaign to try and qualify.’
For the Serbia game on September 5, O’Neill hopes to have Harry Arter on board, and may promote Callum O’Dowda from the U21s as well as Scott Hogan, the 24-yearold old Brentford striker who finished the Championship season strongly.
‘He (Hogan) is another one who’s come to the fore. He looks like he’s got a little bit of pace as well,’ said O’Neill, who acknowledged a lack of options in attack where only Shane Long is the right side of 30.
Ireland scored three goals in four games, one of them a penalty, and with Robbie Keane in decline, a fresh penalty box predator is needed. ‘We need to try and get someone who can score regularly,’ acknowledged O’Neill.
‘When Robbie doesn’t play, and obviously his career is in the latter stages than the earlier, then we don’t actually have a natural goalscorer in that sense.’
O’Neill dropped John O’Shea (35), Glenn Whelan (32) and Wes Hoolahan (34) for the final two games; Keane (35) had less than half an hour’s action, while Shay Given (40) was one of four players not to play at all.
There could have been a revolt but the senior players all stayed tight in the group; no one threw a strop.
‘What I noticed is the really good influence of John O’Shea, who was very supportive; Glenn Whelan is like me, he’s a moany git, but he’s really good and strong with the team, Robbie is playing in America and I don’t know what might be in his mind.
‘These things happen, they look at the younger players coming through and sometimes the older players, it’s like everything else, they don’t want to feel like a liability around the place, or picked just because of reputation.
‘Listen, they will go back and have a think about it. We need to try and get someone who can score regularly.
‘But in terms of the players there I will have a chat with them and see how they feel.
The friendly against Oman on August 31 would be a crowd-puller for any Irish vet allowed a Dublin farewell — Daryl Murphy (33) has already indicated his availability and could take heart from two fine contributions in attack.
Of the three Irish centurions, O’Shea will be needed most by O’Neill for the World Cup, especially with Duffy suspended for the Serbia game.
The next Republic road show rolls off the ramp in less than ten weeks.
Belgrade won’t be all five-star hotels, bunting and blazered UEFA flunkies; it will be a bear-pit of aggression and intimidation. The faint-hearted need not apply.
‘We need to get someone who can score regularly’