`Four halves' not over yet

No panic. This one's a 180 minute game. A game of `four halves'. Remember Belfast? We never qualify at home anyway. It CAN be done. It's far from over. So insisted the entire Irish team, starting in goal with Shay Given, then the entire midfield, finishing with Big Cas and David Connolly, as they emerged from the changing rooms. The mood in the players' tunnel was in stark contrast to the one found amongst the crowd leaving Lansdowne Road.

The captain elaborated on the `four halves' theory. "Listen, it's only half time, we're certainly not out of it. I think we will play better away from home - this game was built up to be the be all and end all for us but that was never going to be the case. It's half time, it's 1-1 and I think we'll get chances against them in Brussels. And if we can score it's game on again," said Andy Townsend.

Did he think the team played poorly? "I think we've played worse, to be honest. Remember, we were playing against a decent side - give them a bit of credit. Sure, we can play better, we know that, but the fact is we're still in there, we haven't been beaten - it's certainly not over yet."

So no gloom in the camp? "No, we're not downhearted, there's still a good mood amongst the lads and we firmly believe we can go out there and rectify the situation. I'd like to think everyone else feels the same. "Sure people can analyse our performance and say it wasn't one of our best, and that's fair to say, but given the context of the match, what was at stake, the most important thing was we didn't get beaten and there's still everything to play for. "Yes, of course it was frustrating, we are disappointed, especially when we had such a great start. It was a shame we couldn't build upon that but to their credit they came back well. They had a lot of useful players in the middle of the park and they were always a danger on the break."

"We had to be careful because the worse thing we could have done was to have really committed hara-kiri and ended up losing the game by two or three-one, something silly like that."

Townsend, who came off with 15 minutes to go because the team needed "some fresh legs out there", admitted to being surprised by how physically strong the Belgians were. "To be honest that did surprise me, they had a lot of very tall lads at the back and it was pretty tough out there. Cas found it very hard - he had two or three guys pulling him most of the time. . . the ref wasn't looking to give us an awful lot tonight."

So what about the return leg in Brussels? "There is a suggestion that we play a wee bit better away from home. We've gone away from home in the past and got very good results - now we need one more," he said, before reminding us, once again, that it was only half time.