It was the performance and result we have all been begging for, and it was made even sweeter given the games of certain young players. A 3-0 win and a man-of-the-match award for Michael Obafemi gave fans all they could have hoped for inside the 90 minutes.
But even after the full-time whistle there was anticipation for the post-match analysis, and in particular the opinion of Richie Sadlier, who has never been one to mince words when criticising Stephen Kenny and his team.
The RTE pundit was singing a much different tune today, and did not hesitate to give the team and the fans their flowers and dues.
Today's all about the Irish fans, they've been waiting a long long long time to see a competitive win here, it's been three years, a lot longer since a win against a higher ranked team. Stephen Kenny said before hand that this could potentially be the biggest result in many many years. It's certainly the biggest result for Stephen Kenny's reign, and a thoroughly deserved result.
We said beforehand that today was all about the result. It didn't matter the performance, that was all secondary, goals would have been great, clean sheet would have been nice, but it was all about the win. But on every element of that performance and the outcome, we're happy.
They knew the importance of the outcome today. And we said beforehand, we were looking for goals, it's not a team that's free scoring. And I look at the team lineup, it's inexperienced players, we weren't having players up front who have a long record of scoring at international level and my god did they produce today. So you can imagine the moral boost in that dressing room, the confidence boost among them particularly the youngsters.
These are the scenes we would have wanted to see. Full of smile, full of hugs, high-fiving each other and a lot of people going home happy.
The result puts Ireland second in their Nations League group, three points behind Ukraine who they face off against in Poland next Tuesday.
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