Hopeful noises of down but not outs

Those few minutes before the first player emerges from the dressing room are always anxious ones for the press at Lansdowne Road. If the first player isn't talking it just might be that they're all not talking and that, folks, means very big pictures indeed.

The rule of thumb for these sort of situations is that when the players win, the press do too, and so after last night's match (a draw, a goal conceded, them looking like a better side than us) there was more than one nervous glance exchanged as we waited to discover whether it would be us that recorded the team's frustration or our colleagues with the cameras.

These days, however, it all works slightly differently around the Irish camp. Poor teams are difficult to play against, home matches are harder to win and conceding an away goal merely leaves the visitors with dilemmas. As they paused to chat one by one we tried to take it all in and, of course, to jot it down.

First out was Steve Staunton whose demeanour, to be fair, was that of a happy man but, from the outset, his words were defiant. "It's only half time in the competition," said the Aston Villa man. "It's 1-1, and if it was going to be a draw we would have preferred nil all but we're happy enough, we got a draw after not playing well and we'll settle for that on the night."

Asked if Ireland can still turn around a tie which the Belgians now feel to be pretty much in the bag, Staunton was clear: "Of course, we can, we went to Iceland and Lithuania when nobody gave us a chance (where, to be fair, they said they would win after the dismal draw against the latter in Dublin) and we won both games.

We can do that again."

The Belgians, felt Irish goal scorer, Denis Irwin, had produced their best for the Dublin crowd last night where as we, he believed, could move up a hatful of gears in a couple of weeks and this would be the key to our eventual victory.

"There's no doubt they were a decent side and that they're manager was just playing silly games when he was playing their chances down but we've played a lot better away from home so far in the group stages and we can play a lot better than we did there tonight.

"We were a bit tentative in the first half, we seemed afraid to pass the ball and ended up relying on the long ball to Cas too much while they were technically good and very well organised.

"Early on they seemed to have a lot of possession which shouldn't have happened but once we juggled with the team a bit things improved and Jeff played very well from the time he came on tonight. Overall, we've learned a lot from our performance here and we have to take those lessons away with us."

Fellow defender, Ken Cunningham, was another to produce the brave face remarking: "Obviously, in an ideal scenario we would have won the game and kept a clean sheet but they showed us tonight what a good side they are.

"Their goal was a disappointment and every goal you concede you think afterwards that you could have defended it that little bit better but then sometimes you have to hold your hand up and admit that they've just done something well and I think their striker took the goal superbly."

Like his team-mates Cunningham admitted that the supply to the strikers had not been great, a view echoed by David Connolly who spent a long and frustrating evening waiting for the opportunity to pose a serious threat.

"Maybe the crowd got to us a bit (oh yeah, home crowds are far from the advantage that they're generally reckoned to be) but we started to hoof it up a bit and that certainly didn't do us much good," sighed the teenager.

"We needed to move the ball up far better than that and as it was we didn't really get it into any decent positions to push them but I think that things will open up a lot more in the second match, I'm sure they will." Of course they will David. Stands to reason, doesn't it.