Ken Early: Stephen Kenny’s luck turns as Irish drama rumbles on

It feels good to finally to catch a break. For once it was the opposing manager, Dragan Stojkovic, who would face an inquest as to how his team had thrown away points against an irrelevant team from the fringes of Europe that has not won a competitive match in years. Serbia had 58 per cent of the ball at the Aviva. They had 11 shots on target to two. The one thing they failed to do was put the ball in the net more than once, and that was down to one man: Gavin Bazunu, the 19-year-old hero in Ireland’s goal.

When a stadium announcement confirmed Bazunu as man of the match in injury time, a huge cheer signalled the crowd’s awe at what they had watched the 19-year-old do. If Bazunu had delivered a merely standard performance in goal, Ireland could have lost 4- or 5-0. Instead he kept them in the game with a remarkable series of saves, so that when Stephen Kenny’s first real piece of luck as Ireland manager arrived in his 16th game, the scoreline was still close enough for it to change the result.

Ireland had set up in a more cautious variant of the 3-4-3 they had used against Azerbaijan, with attacking midfielders Alan Browne and Jamie McGrath playing so deep that the formation often looked more like 5-4-1. Idah, the lone centre forward, was the target of frequent long balls: he battled gamely but, as the half wore on, it was a story of Serbian dominance.

They were the biggest team at the last World Cup, with an average height of 1.86 metres, and it was no surprise when they made that physicality tell at a set-piece. Browne was giving up nearly five inches in height as he tried to mark Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, but it was the big Serb’s movement that made the difference, as his clever burst to the front post took him past Jeff Hendrick to reach Dusan Tadic’s corner. Bazunu got a hand to his flicked header but it wasn’t enough to keep it out.

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Here we go again, you thought, and indeed much of what followed was a struggle for Ireland. But every time Serbia got a sight of goal, they found Bazunu blocking the way.

Opta tweeted after the game that Bazunu had saved 18 of 22 shots on target on this international break: five of seven against Portugal, three from four against Azerbaijan, and 10 from 11 against Serbia - not to mention that penalty save from Ronaldo. It has been a phenomenal week’s work from the Portsmouth goalkeeper.

Watching the crowd’s hero-worship of Bazunu at the end, you had to wonder at the insanity of the fact that the FAI has still not been able to find a main sponsor willing to pay €2.5 million a year to associate their brand with the national team. Bazunu is worth that by himself.

Kenny’s Ireland have suffered some cruel sliding doors moments, going all the way back to Hourihane’s shot from six yards that was blocked by a Slovak defender on the line in the Euro 2020 playoff.

Against Serbia, a penalty-area foul by Stefan Mitrovic on Aaron Connolly at 1-1. No penalty. Instead, Serbia take the lead a few minutes later thanks to a positioning error by Ireland’s third-choice keeper. Against Luxembourg, James Collins’ shot from six yards is saved and Gerson Rodrigues’s from 25 yards flies into the corner. Against Portugal, Ireland are already 1-0 up when Palhinha jumps on Connolly’s back as he prepares to pull the trigger from eight yards. A clear penalty and - since there was no attempt to play the ball - a red card. The referee sees nothing and Portugal go on to win with a goal in the sixth minute of the five minutes of injury time.

If Ireland had been only averagely lucky instead of consistently unlucky, the picture in the qualifying group could look quite different.

Tonight, on the night when they arguably least deserved it, good luck finally came. Callum Robinson crossed, Nikola Milenkovic blocked, Milinkovic-Savic turned onto the loose ball and smashed a clearance violently into his own six yard box, where it ricocheted off Milenkovic and high into the net.

In the end, as the crowd roared the team towards what would have been the unlikeliest of victories, it was the best atmosphere at this stadium since the victory over Germany six years ago. And that energy was about more than just this game.

Unlike his predecessors, Stephen Kenny has taken big rhetorical risks. The last few managers kept telling us we don’t have the players. Kenny has talked up our prospects, promised big things, sold a vision of a golden future. By raising the stakes in this way, he has exposed himself to ridicule, and he has received plenty of it. But the wider effect has been to whip up strong feelings around a team that for the past few years had merely bored everyone. Ireland might not yet be super-competitive on a European level, but the team has become a drama in a way it hadn’t been for years. Every day they go without a main sponsor is a further indictment of the intelligence of Ireland’s corporate sector.