Republic of Ireland manager Martin O’Neill has played down a link to the vacant Hull position, and praised his side for their performance during a 2-2 draw with Serbia on Monday.
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“Jeff Hendrick – never mind Daryl, but Jeff Hendrick will take great confidence from that as well”, he said.
The near-miss seemed to have spurred Ireland into life as they hunted for an equaliser and thought they had it when Walters headed home from a Hendrick cross but was flagged for offside, although the goal that counted came six minutes later.
Meanwhile, Austria got their campaign off to a winning start with goals from Martin Hinteregger and Marc Janko in the first half enough for a 2-1 victory away to Georgia. This was a big point for us and we have to go and try and make use of it now in the upcoming games. “We had a goal disallowed and Shane Long had a great chance to equalise and then Murphy comes up with a great, great goal”.
It should have been 3-1 when Randolph dropped Filip Mladenovic’s shot at the feet of Andrija Pavlovic, but the substitute could only hit the crossbar despite having an empty net to aim at.
Ten minutes later, it was another packed Ireland box that saw Serbia go close as Nemanja Gudelj crossed in from the left, but Aleksandar Mitrovic and Matija Nastasic found themselves tangled together with Hendrick in the middle and the midfielder just did enough to get the ball to trickle past the post.
“He’s fit, regardless of his age, and he steamed into it and that was a great goal for us and a great goal for him too”.
“But the penalty – I don’t know whether you have seen it back or not”.
“We stuck at it and got the draw, which is not the worst result in the world”.
Keane only retired from global duty last week following a record 146-cap, 68-goal Ireland career, and he sent Brady a cheeky reply when he learnt that his old jersey had been reassigned.
He said: “It’s very, very important for him”.
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“The conditions didn’t help but we have not come here expecting to control the game for 90 minutes in an away game against Serbia – that’s lunacy”. I’m delighted with them.
