The Republic of Ireland's international football consultant, Sir Bobby
Robson, appeared with manager Steve Staunton at the post-match press conference
after Kevin Doyle's headed goal against Slovakia had earned the Irish
a fourth consecutive victory.
On the three previous occasions Ireland strung four successive
wins together in qualifying groups, they went on to grace the World Cup
finals of 1990, 1994 and 2002, and with six months to wait until their
next competitive match, they remain on course to qualify for next year's
European Championship finals in Switzerland and Austria.
And veteran Robson made an impassioned plea to a previously hostile media
to give 38-year-old Staunton a break after recent heavy criticism.
Former England manager Robso, 74, revealed: "I rang Stan at two o'clock
this afternoon and said to him, 'Win, lose or draw, we go into the press
conference together'.
"Seeing some of the outrageous remarks and the writing over the last
few days, this could have been an horrific night for Stan if we had lost,
so I felt I should stand by him.
"But we haven't lost. Now let's hope we've six months of calmness,
some sensibility, something constructive, intelligent, fair and reasonable."
Robson added: "He has had a rough ride.
"Hopefully that's over now and things will settle down because we've
put ourselves in a great position to attack the next few matches.
"Hopefully he gets a bit of relief. The stay of execution is over
and he can now live a life. I'm delighted for him."
Robson emphasised the fact that Staunton has had bring in a lot of inexperienced
players since succeeding Brian Kerr as manager. He said: "We've a
lot of youngsters in the team.
"We're in transition - [Shane] Long, Doyle and [Stephen] Hunt, while
on the bench we've [Anthony] Stokes and [Jonathan] Douglas.
"So the team needs time to gain experience, and I'm talking about
Premiership experience, not just international experience."
Staunton himself said: "I thought we did well, but there is room
for improvement, and they will improve.
"But as Bobby said, they are young players. The young lads are learning,
although they've had a taste, and there weren't too many grounds with
70,00 fans tonight.
"We went at them, kept the tempo high, Duff put some great little
crosses in, and we scored when we were on top," said Staunton.
"If we hadn't have done that then we might have struggled second
half, but we had something to hang onto.
"At this level you are never going to dominate the game for 90 minutes,
and when they got on top, our back four and keeper were magnificent.
"Overall, I'm delighted."
,
29/03/2007.
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