Gavin Cooney

AND SO IRELAND enter their longest stretch of inaction, with the senior team’s next game not until 20 March, when they play the first leg of their Nations League relegation play-off. 

Ireland’s opponents were yesterday confirmed as Bulgaria, whom they will have to beat across two legs to retain their status in League B. The first leg will be played in Plovdiv on 20 March, before the return leg in Dublin three days later. 

But as the national team goes into hibernation, it’s rather unfortunate that everyone’s parting memory was the 5-0 hammering at Wembley. What positivity was engendered by the victories over Finland have surely now been clouded over. 

“It’s tough”, says Heimir Hallgrimsson when asked to reflect on the week that was. 

“All coaches would say the same: losing with this [scoreline] has been tough. And criticism, you cannot answer in any way. You need to take it in. Because when you lose five zero you’ve definitely done something wrong. We’re not hiding.” 

Ireland’s flinty first-half resolve was swept away shortly after half-time at Wembley, with Liam Scales’ red card the trigger for a collapse. England led 3-0 within six minutes of Scales trudge off the pitch. 

“The goals we conceded were very soft and strange but I think again it was down to the mentality and psychology, we lost our heads”, says Hallgrimsson. 

Hallgrimsson has given thought to hiring a sports psychologist to work with the squad, and fixing the players’ mentality issues will be vital if Ireland are going to pull off the great improbability next year and qualify for the World Cup. Their Nations League play-off commitments in March means they are guaranteed to be drawn in a four-team group at next month’s World Cup qualifier draw, with the entire campaign running across September, October, and November. 

Ireland are third seeds in the draw, with the top seeds naturally stacked with daunting opponents. Also concerning for Ireland are the quality of their potential opponents in the second pot: Ireland will get one of Ukraine, Turkiye, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia or, God forbid, Greece, who have beaten them four times since June of last year. 

The four-team group does have some benefits for Ireland: it means they won’t have to play qualifiers in June next year, a window in which they have recently struggled given the squad’s reliance on Championship players, whose regular season ends fully five weeks before the qualifiers. 

Hallgrimsson, however, is putting a positive spin on Ireland’s potential World Cup qualifier opponents, with that draw slated for 13 December. 

“The good thing is that we are in a four-team group”, he says. “That is more or less 100%. Then we can use June for final preparation, more relaxed.

“The teams that we can face especially from Pot Two are not teams that are much better than us, even though they are higher ranked. It gives me hope than we can do things. No matter who we face we will be ready when it comes to the World Cup.” 

Hallgrimsson has used 31 different players so far, and the Bulgaria tie gives some scope for further experimentation ahead of a June window that can happily be used exclusively for that purpose. 

The 31st player to be used by Hallgrimsson has left an impression. 

“It was positive, the introduction of Andy Moran”, says Hallgrimsson of Moran, who made his competitive senior debut just minutes before Ireland fell 5-0 down. “He showed leadership skills, he was not afraid to take the ball in probably the worst moment for a sub, to come in in a game you know is kind of lost. But he showed good characteristics once he came in so that’s a good thing.” 

The experimentation will cease by the time the World Cup qualifiers come around, however, when Hallgrimsson will then nail down his preferred team in pursuit solely of results. 

The manager himself is becoming more comfortable in his role, landing into the job in September without a deep knowledge of his players. Hence the first camp was largely delegated to John O’Shea, a decision he continues to stand by. 

John O'Shea with Hallgrimsson. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

“I have learned more about my players, and that was always going to be the tricky part coming in”, he says.

“The most difficult part of the job for me as a foreigner coming in [was] the transition from scouting north and central America in Concacaf and then Conmebol, coming from that environment to jumping straight into this and being confronted with 40 or 50 journalists: that was kind of the most challenging aspect of the job until now.

“In the beginning, like I said to you guys when we sat together, I thought it was a good decision to have John O’Shea fronting the team, because you need to answer questions and probably I didn’t have the answers.

“When there would be a question about a player and I didn’t know, it would look silly not to be able to answer. In the beginning I said less and I think that was a good decision.

“All of a sudden you are representing a country, you are kind of a spokesman for a country, and you like to do that while you need to be careful what you say and what you do.”