The Chelsea star went on to describe the impact of conceding a sloppy first goal. 'All around the pitch I don’t think we ever got going and it wasn’t the Ireland we’ve all come to know. I don’t know why we didn’t play well. On the night we deserved to lose,' he explained.
'The first goal killed us really. It’s always going to be hard to get back from that because we had to win the game and I think it was five minutes gone. We didn’t play well, on the night. None of us were really after them.'
Defender Gary Breen, whose night beside John O'Shea at centre-back was fraught with nervous tension, felt 'if you lose home and away to a team you don't deserve to qualify, and that's what we did.'
Tottenham striker Robbie Keane was simply in shock.
'We didn’t do it, I don’t know why,' muttered the Crumlin kid, 'it’s hit me already. Next summer, we won’t be at the European Championship finals having been so close. It’s very disappointing.'
Captain Matt Holland, looking short of match fitness, felt that Ireland didn’t miss out on qualification in Basel, they lost out in earlier matches as well. 'I think we started the campaign badly and then got going but 1-1 against Russia wasn’t good enough. But the bottom line is we didn’t do it over eight games,' he said.
'You can’t fault the effort and commitment; it just wasn’t enough on the night.
'The last 20 minutes in the first half we had three snap shots and maybe if one of those had gone in, you’d never know what happened. But then we tried to change our shape and we had a bit of pressure and then they scored a second goal and that was it really. At 2-0 we needed to score three goals and it was going to be difficult.'
'Of course we can bounce back,' he surmised.
'In terms of international football this is a very young squad. The average age is a lot younger than teams like France.
'With players like Robbie Keane, Damien Duff, John O’Shea have got a lot of experience behind them and they’ll be the guys who will make this team better and that can only be good for us.'
Goalkeeper Shay Given also insisted that the team would soon turn their minds towards the road to Germany and the 2006 World Cup. 'I’ve never been to the European Championships as a player but we got to the World Cup last year and now we’ve got to fight another day and look forward to the World Cup draw.'