Brady, Hendrick and McCarthy Star As France Beat Ireland

What a strange feeling! The Irish adventure at Euro 2016 is over. In sweltering heat in Lyons yesterday, the dream of ultimate victory in the competition died, when an excellent French side inflicted a punishing 2-1 defeat on a courageous Irish team.

It's electric in Lyon! #COYBIG This is it!!! pic.twitter.com/C4nibvgSvg

— Hot Press (@hotpress) June 26, 2016

For the first 45 minutes, it looked as if we might just have the measure of Les Bleus. The game started brilliantly for Ireland, when good football created an opening in the French defence. Daryl Murphy couldn’t get a shot away on the turn, and the ball squirted free. Shane Long raced to retrieve the chance and Paul Pogba clattered into and tripped him.

The equivocal prognostications of RTE’s live pundit Jim Beglin (or Jim Belgium, as we prefer to call him in honour of Jack Charlton) notwithstanding, it was a stone cold penalty. Robbie Brady stepped up to take it and hammered it into the bottom right hand corner, where it hit the inside of the post on the way in. Ireland were ahead 1-0. 88 minutes remained on the clock.

For the rest of the half, Ireland took everything that the French threw at them in their stride and played some fine football of their own, so that they looked like the better team, at least some of the time.

At half-time, the French manager Didier Deschamps made a substitution and a tactical change. With Ireland playing relatively deep, he decided that he could dispense with the holding midfielder N’Golo Kante, who would have had to tread carefully anyway, having been given a yellow card during the first 45 minutes.

Deschamps introduced the young Bayern Munich winger Kingsley Coman and pushed Antoine Griezmann up to play alongside Olivier Giroud as a second striker. It proved to be a master stroke.

Ireland were beginning to look tired, when the French struck. One attack had been repelled. The ball was played back across to Bacary Sagna on the right. We weren’t quite quick enough to close him down. But the real crunch was that Ireland's Richard Keogh was caught ball-watching. He had followed Griezmann out during the first attack, as if he knew he was his man. As the play rolled on, Keogh dropped back but also came unnecessarily towards the ball. Apparently forgotten, Griezmann had doubled quickly in behind, into the space that had opened up in the Irish penalty area.

James McCarthy was also retreating and might have got closer to the French attacker. But it was Richard Keogh who had lost him. Griezmann leapt gratefully to Sagna's perfectly flighted ball and nodded powerfully home.

Still Ireland were in the game. But France had their tails up and hard questions were being asked of the Irish central defence. Perhaps, Deschamps had spotted a weakness. Either way, they didn’t have the answers.

A relatively hopeful long ball was pumped forward to Giroud, who was between the two Irish centre-halves. Shane Duffy could have held his position and would have been favourite to tidy up. Instead he went to win the header – with Richard Keogh also jumping, it meant that two Irish players going for the same ball. Giroud is very strong in the air and clever into the bargain. His flick-on was perfectly conceived, down into the space beyond the despairing Duffy. Seamus Coleman, had he reacted quickly enough, coming in off the right, might perhaps at least have put Griezmann under a bit of extra pressure. But there was a split second delay before he reacted.

The Athletico Madrid marksman was onto the ball like lightning and gave Darren Randolph no chance. 2-1. Now it was Ireland who had to try to claw their way back into the game. And we just didn’t have it in us.

Another defensive error saw Griezmann being released for a third time and Shane Duffy tried to slide those long legs of his in a way that might just allow him to get a nick on the ball – and the man. He succeeded only in the latter and while the contact was minimal, when Griezmann tumbled the referee felt that he had no option.

In fact, under the new rules, he had a decision to make. Unless the foul is clearly intentional – and there isn’t an honest attempt to get the ball involved – he does not have to send the player off. Whether or not he was tuned-in to this new dispensation is uncertain. He reached for the red card and everyone knew, more or less, that our goose was cooked. Because even if by some miracle we conjured an equaliser in normal time, our jaded troops couldn’t possibly compete 10 against 11 through 30 minutes extra time.

Must a minute before the sending off, John Walters had come in for Daryl Murphy. Now, John O’Shea was brought on to shore up the defence. And, in a final throw of the dice, Wes Hoolahan replaced James McCarthy. But it was too much to expect, after just three days recovery time and down to 10 men, that we would produce a final flourish.

The game ended 2-1 and France looked, over the 90 minutes, like a superior footballing machine. But that bald statement ignores how close we came on a couple of occasions to stretching our lead – and then getting back on equal terms, at 2-2, before the sending off.

In the first instance, the French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris did his work superbly cutting out a ball that would have given Shane Long a tap-in at the back post. In the second, having brilliantly out-muscled and out-paced the French centre-half Rani, James McClean pulled the ball back to a relieved, back-tracking French midfielder, rather than squaring it to Daryl Murphy, for whom it would have been the simplest of finishes.

The winning and losing of football games hinges on events as precise as that. Had McClean got the head up and made the right pass, all bets would have been off. Equally, had Shane Duffy held his ground when Giroud went to head the ball into Griezmann’s path, he’d have been clear favourite to root it clear. But what happened happened. And Ireland were out…

Their business done for the summer, the players, notably Seamus Coleman and Robbie Brady, made it clear that they felt that this was a game they could have won. They were visibly distraught, not because they had been outclassed but because moments of naivety had cost them, and us, dearly. What was encouraging, however, was that Ireland no longer looked like neanderthals, playing a different game to the better teams in the tournament.

There were excellent passages of football from Ireland especially in the first half. And the spine of a new team seems to have asserted itself, offering considerable hope for the future. “I can’t wait for the World Cup to start,” Robbie Brady, perhaps the Irish player of the tournament said in a post-match interview, which will have endeared him hugely to people all over Ireland.

He clearly loves playing for his country. But there was also a sense in which he wanted the extraordinary adventure on which he and the rest of the team had embarked to be continued as soon as is humanly possible. That’s the spirit of this new Ireland team and it might just be enough to enable us to look ahead with confidence to real future glories.

Jeff Hendrick also grew as an international player, in a way that must have impressed club coaches all over Europe – and which will hopefully win him a move to a bigger club than Derby, where he currently plays.

I want also to mention James McCarthy here. He had a torrid time against Belgium and afterwards took responsibility for two of Belgium’s goals. Lesser players might have let that get to them. But, first against Italy and again here, Martin O’Neill showed his faith in the Everton mid-fielder. And that faith was proven fully justified with two excellent performances.

With Glenn Whelan dropping to the bench, McCarthy was positioned more centrally and he looked far more comfortable there.

In fact he was outstanding in the first half on the game against France. He carried out his defensive duties brilliantly. But he was also marvellously economical in his use of the ball. And he also hit a couple of really superb, longer passes of the kind that not only relieve pressure hugely but give the attacking members of the team more than just scraps to work off.

There is an inevitable feeling of deflation this morning, thinking of what might have been. But far more important is a wider appreciation of just what this tournament has meant for football in Ireland – and the good it has done to our sense of well-being – and our reputation, as a footballing nation, and as a nation.

The fans were, as always, great: France fell in love with them as well they might. But our players also showed that they could and can play football. And there is the nucleus of a younger team coming through that just might prove, under the guidance of Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane, to be real international contenders during the next World Cup.

The new spine that emerged includes Darren Randolph (29), Seamus Coleman (27), Shane Duffy (24), James McCarthy (25), Robbie Brady (24), Jeff Hendrick (24), James McClean (27) and Shane Long (29). To these we can add Harry Arter (26), Darron Gibson (28), Cyrus Christie (23) and Callum O’Dowda (21), for a start, and the shape of a younger team starts to emerge that might just be welded together into a special force.

Our success in France and the admirable bearing with which Irish football, its management and its players as well as its fans, carried themselves will also help with the recruitment of new players who qualify to play for us, under the parentage or grandparent rule.

In a sea of blue in Stade de Lyon... The Boys in Green #COYBIG #FRAIRL pic.twitter.com/ck5rMfRMpu

— Hot Press (@hotpress) June 26, 2016

Right now, those that served us so well over the past two years should be applauded – and thanked for the wonderful, enduring memories. They deserve our collective respect and affection. They brought back the smiles to the faces of Irish fans after the barren years under Giovanni Trapattoni. And they inspired children all over Ireland in a way that is sure to be good for football here, and our ability to produce the stars of the future.

Onwards and upwards. The World Cup beckons. Wales, Austria, Serbia, Georgia and Moldova, here we come…

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