IRELAND MANAGER Giovanni Trapattoni hailed his young side’s performance against Uruguay tonight, despite their 3-2 defeat.

The Italian insisted there’s plenty of good points to take from a battling display in front of a mere 20,200 supporters at the Aviva Stadium.

“In general we had a good match a good performance,” he said, “taking into consideration, we had put together an almost completely new team in two days, and we played against a super team who plays together for a long time and did well at the World Cup.

“We had some very good individual performance like Fahey, Long and Kelly and only two naive mistakes when we lost the ball to them cost us two goals.”

Ireland went in 3-1 down at the break but emerged to quickly pull it back to one goal with an early Keith Fahey penalty. And Trapattoni insisted the Irish were good value for their second-period dominace.

“I think we deserved to draw, based on the second haf we had some very good opportunities with Long and Keogh. Westwood made a very good save but other than that we  they didnt have many more chances.”

The home side set up with young James McCarthy in the hole behind Shane Long in a new-look formation. The Wigan man seemed lost – particularly in the first half – but the manager claimed any failures in the new system were not McCarthy’s responsibility.

“This evening I look – its not McCarthy’s fault – but it’s not easy playing this position. I think we can look in the future especially away and use this as we need to be more strong offensively.

“I’m not disappointed with McCarthy. He has no fault, he’s just trying to find his position,” he added.