3 days Ago By Irishexaminer.com
The buck may stop with the manager but fronting up to the sort of defeat that the Republic of Ireland suffered at Wembley on Sunday evening doesn’t end with honest admissions from Heimir Hallgrimsson, or even notes of regret from the captain Nathan Collins. These are only the initial soundings and, if both men delivered them almost note perfect when holding their hands up over that 5-0 nightmare, then there needs to be an understanding that this is a process that comes with a long tail. Mixed zones and how they operate should mean nothing to the general public, but suffice it to say that the day when players filed through them and journalists had the chance to hook a clutch for their thoughts on what just happened are long since gone.
Dwindling access means hand-picked patsies and it’s an area that is a consistent bugbear - no tears for the poor media, please - because of the choices of player tasked with facing up to whatever unfortunate series of events just transpired. It shouldn’t be complicated. If you win then the scope for selection is wide as you like.
If you lose then the onus should rest on the staff involved to make sure that the man or woman facing the music and the microphones is of an age and a seniority to suit. Andrew Moran shouldn’t have been one of them in the hours after England ran rampant. Still only 21, Moran has only earned two senior caps.
His brief time on the pitch in London at the weekend brought to 27 the number of minutes he has managed since making his debut against New Zealand 12 months ago. Asking a player with that lack of experience to come on as England were running rampant was one thing. Asking him to stand and explain everything that just happened? It wasn’t fair, not when Sammie Szmodics was pulled away just as he appeared ready to chat.
“I don't know, you're trying to lift the boys as much as I can and try and provide a little spark if you can, just to get everyone's energy up,” said Moran. “It was a tough time to come on, but I still really enjoyed it as it's my second cap for my country and a really proud moment.” Moran seems like a capable guy, off the park as well as on it, and he has had to absorb the disappointment of the U21s’ agonising failure to qualify for the Euro 2025 finals or even make a playoff having put themselves into pole position.
It was the third straight campaign in which the 21s have come close without smoking the cigar but the bigger picture to that grade, as it always is, presents itself in the raw materials it produces for the top shelf. Its not so long ago that Stephen Kenny flooded the senior squad with a clutch of underage graduates and, if the hopes for most of them have not been met, then it is still the most likely means by which Ireland can build for the years to come. “We’ve loads coming up.
The youth teams for years have done quite well. The 21s played [on Sunday], Jamie Mullins scored, that was as far as I watching it before I had to prepare for the game. So, yeah, loads of quality players coming through hopefully.
” There is no magic bullet. Not unless someone in the FAI can identify and secure (for good this time) another Declan Rice or Jack Grealish that can plug in to the current squad and bring a level of class that is still missing from the midfield. For Moran, the task is to go back to Stoke City and do enough between now and the next international window in March, when Ireland play a Nations League B playoff, to earn himself the chance to start games for his country.
The temptation will be to forget this embarrassment at the home of football, to erase it from the collective memory banks and plot a course independent of this car crash, but Moran isn’t of that view. “No, I don't think we can just write it off. We need to be disappointed about it.
We don't want to come here and just accept that we're going to lose. No, we don't just write it off, we look back at it and see what went wrong for the next time. “We're going to play teams of this quality at World Cups and Euros if we want to get there, so we need to learn to take points off teams like this.
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