ANALYSIS: How Ireland must grasp hold of an exciting future

Before Ireland faced Italy last Wednesday, Roy Keane faced the media and talked about the short-term and long-term issues for Irish football. Looking back over failures that had lasted for generations, Keane also tried to see beyond the game against Italy and beyond Ireland’s ultimate exit from the tournament.

“You’ve got to be able to deal with the ball and that’s an area we have to improve on. It’s highly unlikely we’re going to do it in the next 48 hours. In terms of the bigger picture from the underage teams, you have to have lads who can put their foot on the ball and show a bit of composure, bit of courage, want the ball.”

If this tournament has taught us anything about Ireland, it’s that the country is capable of producing players who can make a mark at an international tournament: now Ireland needs to produce more of them.

Ireland have a management team temperamentally incapable of embracing glorious failure. Martin O’Neill and Keane saw no reason that Ireland couldn’t beat France and their ambitions for the players seemed to advance throughout the competition.

O’Neill’s bold selection against Italy ensured that this tournament had a very different complexion. Instead of a first round exit which would have been accompanied by the usual questions and the same kind of questions as four years ago, Ireland provided one of the great games in their history.

He backed James McCarthy who delivered against Italy and it made it even curiouser that the manager had retreated from that selection in the wake of the victory over Germany.

Now he has no need to go back. Ireland have a first eleven that can compete for World Cup qualification, but there are other questions which shouldn’t be ignored because of the joyous moments in this campaign.

In fact, those joyous moments make it even more urgent that Ireland takes seriously the task of revolutionising the production of players. Everything should be up for discussion in a wide-ranging debate. The public have been energised by the national team, they care about Robbie Brady and Jeff Hendrick as they haven’t cared for nearly twenty years.

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In an ideal world, they’d go and watch League of Ireland matches next week, but blaming them if they don’t is pointless. If Ireland is to change then everything - including radical reform of the league - should be on the agenda.

Ruud Dokter’s technical development plan is an indication that the FAI are engaged by this debate, but more needs to be done, including somehow finding more money to fund the game at underage level. Now is the time to advance this case while the public are interested.

Brady and Hendrick are both graduates of St Kevin’s Boys club, as is Jack Byrne. This may be a coincidence, but it probably isn’t. There will be those who will feel that their expertise is being wasted, while critics will feel they have taken the best talent for too long and served themselves rather than the broader game. It’s a suggestion the club would reject, but the key fact surely is their ability to produce players. That expertise can’t be ignored.

Ireland need to shape a plan around the next qualification campaign and beyond. O’Neill is a manager who has always been driven by results, but as he begins his fourth year in the job, he knows he will have to find players for the long-term future as well as the campaign now approaching.

Jack Byrne or Callum O’Dowda would have been a better selection in the squad than David Meyler. O’Neill used more players than any previous Irish manager, but the next campaign should also be about the campaign after that, a change in emphasis which would require a greater understanding from others, including the media.

The exhaustion that overwhelmed Ireland early in the second half may have simply been a consequence of their schedule. France hadn’t played for a week. Ireland had an adrenaline-fuelled victory on Wednesday and a late return to their Versailles base, as they waited for the players who had been selected for doping control to go through the standard routine.

France, meanwhile, are playing a different tournament to everyone else. They will have a week’s rest before they meet the winners of England and Iceland in Paris next Sunday as well.

Ireland had been defending their lead since Robbie Brady’s goal since the second minute and perhaps that did something to their energy levels. 

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If the first 45 minutes provided a glimpse of Ireland as they might be, a vision of a midfield with Hendrick, Brady and McCarthy dominating, the second saw a return to an old familiar Ireland where defeat seems inevitable.

The defensive mistakes at the back hastened their downfall. Hendrick will surely be at a Premier League club next season - although he might favour a move abroad - but he was hindered by the dead leg he picked up in the first half.

As the game went away from them, Ireland’s lack of a truly creative player apart from Wes Hoolahan became apparent. When they run out of energy they find it harder to overcome their limitations and on those occasions, their limitations can be very limiting.

But there has been enough in this tournament to feel hopeful about the future. Ireland still has plenty of problems, but Robbie Brady’s goal, and the way it electrified the country, demonstrated what this team can do.

For 45 minutes on Sunday, it looked as if they could do it again, but that was too much to ask of tired, weary if heroic players. They needed assistance. The next debate about Irish football should concern the best way of helping the players who made the most of this tournament make even more of the next one. It was a question that couldn’t be answered in 48 hours, but now Ireland has the time to come up with a solution.