Rather than suggesting Ireland are about to astonish the world, Heimir Hallgrímsson says the players are eagerly anticipating a big opportunity to show how good they are. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
Seldom can the build-up to any Ireland game have been so dominated by talk about what happened in the previous game. Ireland play Portugal on Saturday night and the prospect of a match against one of the outstanding national teams in world football would usually be exciting enough to engage the attention. Instead the team are still haunted by the shambolic defeat in Yerevan that cost us any realistic chance of World Cup qualification.
There has been talk this week about our players’ struggle with the “heavy shirt”. Are we giving ourselves too much credit? Really, why should Ireland be a heavy shirt? A heavy shirt usually means teams like Brazil, Real Madrid, Manchester United – institutions with a tradition of great
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