Individual tales mirror team regrets

It was one of those nights all right. One of the greatest, one of the worst. Players who a couple of hours before had shed tears on hearing the final whistle in Brussels now stood quietly around waiting for their luggage in Dublin airport. The tears in their eyes had barely dried.

Over the previous few hours some of the players talked of retirement, others of future campaigns, a chance to get it right next time. Some, like Kenny Cunningham, one of several players to produce their best football on the night, had reflected on what had transpired at the King Baudouin stadium and how, sometimes, your best simply isn't good enough.

For Cunningham the first goal rankled. A momentary lapse lasting no more than a split second had proved expensive and he knew it.

"I'm very disappointed with the goal from a personal point of view," said the 26-year-old defender. "He just peeled off my shoulder and got a yard and I was never going to make that ground back up. Shay (Given) came, but he was unfortunate, Oliveira was very sharp and in the end it was what you'd expect - a world class finish from a world class striker."

At the other end of the field, Tony Cascarino had toiled endlessly for those around him, but he too found himself apologising for his error. A chance in the first half had been squandered because he had not realised how much time he had to take the ball down.

"Really, though, I think we lost it back in Dublin. If we'd played there the way we did tonight we'd have been comfortably through," he said.

Typically, he refused to dwell too long over the throw-in decision which had led to their second, but he admitted it came at a bad time because "I thought at 1-1 we really had every chance of going on to win the match, but that's football, it wasn't to be".

On David Connolly's sending-off, he played safe, saying that he had not seen the incident, but that if he had committed the foul he would perhaps learn that "you just can't do things like that".

Then, the man who had been involved in a 90-minute tussle with his own marker, thought better of it, adding: "Mind you, I did it (hit out) at the end."

Asked about his plans for the future, Cascarino said that he would go away, think about it, and then have a chat with Mick McCarthy. Andy Townsend was more positive about his intentions as he thanked those who had helped him over the years and announced his intention to see out his days at club level.

"I've had a wonderful time. I've been very fortunate, privileged to have played so long, while to be captain too was something that I could only have dreamt about a long time ago."

By the next time anybody saw him, however, McCarthy had clearly twisted his arm and matters were a lot more vague. We might, he admitted, see him in an Irish jersey once more, only time would tell.

Mark Kennedy was glad to have redeemed himself in an Irish jersey and was looking forward to the future. He might have put his improvement since the Dublin match down to his positional switch alone, but he refused to take what he said would be "the easy way out".

"I was baffled at half-time last night about how badly I played in the first game, but the fact is that I had a bad night. Afterwards everybody said it was a gamble that didn't pay off, which hurt because Mick clearly didn't think it was a gamble and I didn't see it that way, so I was happy to do so much better this time around.

"Overall it's very disappointing, but all I can do is hope that next time we do better. There's a lot of young players in the squad and more to come in. I feel that if my career goes to plan I could have two or three World Cup campaigns ahead of me, so hopefully the next one will end more happily."

In a somewhat similar position to Townsend, Frankie van der Elst had his own retirement postponed by Saturday night's victory. The Bruges midfielder, who will go to his fourth World Cup next year, admitted to being a "very happy and a little proud" after the game, but also grateful that the Irish performance in Dublin had not been like this one.

"That was the Ireland I expected to see there, but we have to be thankful that it took them 90 minutes to play the way we thought they would from the start.

"We did not," as his manager Georges Leekens had earlier commented, "play well. We hit too many high balls when we should have played more football, but the second goal came at the right time for us because if we had had to battle for another five or 10 minutes it would have become very difficult." Although he admitted that the throw-in award for the second goal was controversial, he was keen to point out a refereeing error in the first half. "In the first half we deserved a penalty which would have been 2-0. The game, I think, would have been dead instead of us having to fight until the very last minute."

Luc Nilis, meanwhile, pointed to the performance of Lee Carsley as one of the key differences between the two games, remarking that "the number six won a lot of balls and made it hard for us".

"We failed to play in most of the pitch, only in attack did we play," he added, without any great arrogance, "but we got two chances and scored two goals so it was good enough."

Asked about Shay Given, who he has scored against in two recent internationals and in one club game, he once again praised the Donegalman, who he had earlier credited with keeping Irish hopes alive in Dublin. "I have good memories of him, better than his of me."