4 days Ago
He has just turned 21 and is one of the most inexperienced members of the Ireland set-up with just two senior caps on his CV. But midfielder Andy Moran speaks sense like a seasoned campaigner when he says that this Ireland squad cannot afford the luxury of just packing away Sunday’s humiliation at Wembley as a night to forget. No matter the year, the manager, the competition or the player, post-match interviews with Ireland players in the wake of a defeat, especially a heavy one, follow the same path.
There are learnings, moving on, keeping the head down and working hard in training ...
often followed by another loss the next time out. So it was heartening to hear from Moran in the bowels of Wembley Stadium after the defeat fronting up for interviews on a night when older and more experienced players shied away from the mics and the questions. "I don't think we can just write it off.
We need to be disappointed about it,” the Stoke City man said of the 5-0 loss. “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. “We’ve to work to do, obviously we’re not the finished article yet, we’ve got a group of lads who will give everything so we’ll keep trying to get where we want to be.
“It’s a tough result but we’ll pick ourselves up. We’ve got to draw on the positives we can take from the first half and then look back and what we can do better in the second half. Obviously, being the end of the camp, we regroup.
We need to all watch it back, see what wrong, try and learn from it, and then, hopefully, come back in March raring to go.” For Moran, this was a second disappointment in the green jersey in the space of a few weeks as his U-21 team went close in their bid to qualify for the Euro finals but fell short. And it was a lot to ask of Moran to come on when Ireland were 3-0 down, the game clearly lost with only a question of how much more punishment was to come.
“It's a tough time to come on, you're trying to lift the boys as much as you can and try and provide a little spark if you can, just to get everyone's energy up. 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,” says the St Joseph’s Boys/Bray Wanderers product. “When the first goes in, you're doing the best you can to try and regroup and see it out for 10 minutes and try and kill the game a little bit.
But it's obviously difficult, 10 men against a team of that quality is really difficult. It's easier said than done.” By the time the March games come around, there could be a different shape to the Irish squad and Moran believes some of his fellow youngsters have the ability to make the step.
"We’ve loads coming up,” Moran says of the U-21 and others. “I think the youth teams for years have done quite well. The 21s played on Sunday, Jamie Mullins scored, that was as far as I was watching it before I had to prepare for the game.
So, loads of quality players coming through hopefully. “Ideally, you want to start games. I’m new to the group and need to earn the trust of the manager and the trust of the lads around me, do what I can every session, and if I get on the pitch, try and make the most of it.
"We’ve got a lot of depth. If you’re performing, you’ll get in. If not, there will be other lads that are performing, so it’s a lot of competition, which can only lead to everyone playing better, pushing each other.
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