Eoin Sheahan

the options and the physicality, the options versus the Czech defenders.

There was a couple of moments, there was one brilliant moment I thought from Dara O'Shea where he decided, listen, the long balls aren't going well here, I'm just going to dribble out of defence here and he gets fouled, relieves the pressure and those are the sorts of moments we'll be talking about this morning of Ireland that have clung on to a 2-1 win.

So maybe that becomes the theme over the next couple of days, how Ireland actually deal with the pressure of holding off a lead.

Yeah, definitely.

And the thing from that Finesse sort of half chance, it was Darrochet involved in the build-up again and deepened the opposition half.

Nathan Collins with a long ball that sets up the opportunity in the first instance.

A long ball is great when the option is there, when it was the searching ball over the top to find an Ogbeni.

It was fantastic because I did, look, I agree with the point about Troy Parrott being largely ineffective from open play, but he probably did make the check defence thing twice and he probably dragged an extra man in.

That probably allowed Ogbeni to get into the game a little bit more.

But yeah, what changed in that third quarter that Ireland were under the caution, they didn't look as good on the ball.

I did feel the Czech press was non-existent in the first half at times.

I felt they were in a bit of disarray and O'Shea and Collins looked exceptional.

So they probably got the grips on that.

They probably started to remind themselves that if you can put this Ireland team under pressure, maybe they're not world-class on the ball, which we know ourselves.

And that's not anything new.

We would have said that after the highs of the Hungary game and the Portugal game as well.

And I just couldn't believe really in the first half how good that Ireland defence looked on the ball.

It probably was to do with it.

a lack of Czech pressure, and maybe that comes back to the penalty they scored in the first half, that extra bit of belief that Kube could go in at half-time and say, listen lads, into them, they're not as good as they may be shown in that first quarter, and that was a killer.

Yeah, and as we know, there is a game on Tuesday.