Martin O’Neill wants Irish stars to rise to occasion
“In the previous competition we got off to a reasonable start then stuttered during the middle of it but came very, very strong in the last part of the competition and that got us through,” he says.
“Beating the world champions was massive. We have to rise to the occasion again. This is it. We have two games and we know that if win those two games that you would be desperately unlucky not to be in the play-offs. I will genuinely say this to you, if you had said to me at the start of the competition, before we even travelled to Serbia in the opening game, ‘by the way you have to win your last game at home and you have to win in Wales to make it to the play-offs’, I would have taken it.”
First up for Ireland is the visit of Moldova to Dublin on Friday, October 5, with O’Neill hoping the home crowd can help inspire his team ahead of the trip to Cardiff on Monday the 9th.
“My thinking is pretty clear. The Moldova game is everything to us, we have to win the match. It will be a nervy 90 minutes, we’ve seen this before in games we’re hoping to win. We want to go to Wales with everything to play for.
“When the crowd are up for it, it is particularly special,” he says of the Aviva Stadium. “When you think of some of the evenings we’ve had, you think immediately about Germany, then you think about Bosnia. And, as I’ve often said, I felt greater elation in that one, probably because there was a finality to it and we had qualified for the Euros.
“You think of those but you also think of some of the matches in which we’ve come from behind because, really, it’s the surge of the crowd which has kept the players going. I’m thinking about Poland and Austria in the second half when obviously the players fed off that sort of atmosphere. There is no question that when the atmosphere is very strong, the players react to it. I know this myself from being a player and a manager.“
For all that, he can’t help noting a couple of ironies to do with Ireland playing on home soil. “Strangely enough, despite all of the fantastic support we get, our results away from home have actually been better but that’s unusual rather than being the norm,” he observes.
“And we don’t seem to have had the rub of the green in some of the decisions made here so it’s not as if to say the referee has been intimidated by such noise. I’ve been in stadiums where the crowd has not been so big and where the home side seems to get everything. It hasn’t been the case here.”
Reflecting on the bigger picture of squad development as he nears the conclusion of his second campaign in charge, O’Neill says: “There are two elements to this. You want to try to qualify for competitions. That’s my job. If I had taken up the mantle here almost four years ago and John Delaney had said to me, ‘what we want is that in four years’ time we have a young side that is vibrant and ready to go so don’t worry about qualification’, I think we could have done that quite easily.
“Some of the old guard, who have been really, really fine players for the national side, we could easily have said ‘lads, time is up, we are going with this youth policy’.
“But what’s happened is that some of the older players have stuck with it, and have been excellent for us. What we are looking for at this minute is younger players of that quality to come through and take their place.
“That’s the most important thing. International football, whatever you talk about it, is a step up for the players.”
