THUNDER STORMS in Budapest and perhaps a lightning strike in the mind of Giovanni Trapattoni too. On a rainy night in the city, the Italian saw something in the play of the young Magyars that will make him review how Ireland will line out against Croatia next Sunday.

An honourable 0-0 stalemate and a raucous old atmosphere in the glorious relic of the Ferenc Puskas stadium were all very well. But the Italian saw a vulnerability about his Irish team that he did not like.

“I used this game to teach the players to understand how we must play. We could have lost two or three goals,” Trapattoni said in heated debate when the night was done.

“We must show the players why we could have conceded those. The team must understand why we had these difficulties. My duty must change. I wanted to use this game to evaluate if there was a need to change. Hungary played very well: quick, fast football. They are strong in every section.

“When we met this team I know what our difficulty is. I will speak with the team and show them our difficulty because we need to take the decision either to sacrifice a striker or change the situation.”

So the Irish team flew out of Budapest for Poland with much to think about. And the strange thing was that there may not have been a game here at all.

Noon-day sunshine had given way to storm clouds by late afternoon and as the visiting fans began to appear on the metro lines, the sky over Budapest began to look almost Celtic: moody and darkening.

As the teams warmed, the Hungarians chanted the odes which have been echoing around the stadium since Puskas was the dashing young matinee idol of the city and the Magyars were the jewel of continental football. The Irish responded with more familiar refrains.

Then, just as the players were leaving the field after their preliminary warm-up, the sky growled and lightning flashed, eclipsing the floodlights, and a spectacular rainstorm swept through the stadium, tap-dancing across the running track, ruining summer shirts and dresses and leaving the players huddled in their dressing rooms. The match was delayed by 10 minutes. Slaven Bilic, the Croatian manager who sat among the Budapest crowds, must have wondered whether his trip to Budapest might be for nothing.

Robbie Keane cast a wary look at the sky as he led the Irish team out onto the pitch. Keane has lived through so much drama in an Irish shirt that a thunder-and-lightning preamble probably just seems like par for the course.

The Irish started hesitantly and as the rainwater rose with every challenge and the players skated across the grass, injury, the old devil, was a bigger worry than the concession of a goal. Visions of Richard Dunne tobogganing across the grass in Moscow and hammering his head against the running track came to mind several times.

And as the match warmed up for the Hungarians, who are building towards a concerted push for world cup qualification, several full-stretch tackles were needed. Sean St Ledger was slow to take his feet after making a brilliant covering tackle to snuff out Adam Szalai, and twice Balazs Dzsudzsak showed why Dynamo Moscow were ready to splash out €19 million for his signature, letting two bullets fly which demanded the best from Shay Given. Those were the flashes of Magyar creativity which concerned Trapattoni.

The night wore on, drier and cooler. Half past ten in Budapest and still no goals – and still the Hungarian chants sounded into the night. This was shaping into another game on which Richard Dunne could leave his indelible stamp. He was as commanding as ever – the thump for a headed clearance echoed around the ground and set Simon Cox up at the other end – but it is his clairvoyant reading of the game which makes him such a wonderful player to watch.

“He’s a great player. I admire him,” Slaven Bilic would say later.

Hungary kept on pressing, looking for a winner to send their home fans off into the night singing. It almost came in the 84th minute: a low drive from Imre Szabis deceived, except for Stephen Hunt, who flicked it off the goal line, cool as a breeze. On it went. Paul McGrath got a shout out in the Puskas stadium, just for the hell of it. Hungary had a half-chance for glory at the end but it ended with no goals.

The Irish collected their Magyar jerseys as souvenirs and headed straight from the dressing room to the airport. Before he left, John O’Shea reassured reporters that he was fit for Poland. “I knew that once I trained four or five days I’d be okay. With the ankle you can go over on it at any stage so I’m going to have keep an eye on it.”