Nathan Collins full of praise for John O'Shea's 'stress-free' Ireland tenure
A draw and a defeat for John O’Shea in his time as Ireland manager, then.
It’s not a record that will jump off the pages in years to come but Nathan Collins is of the belief that the Waterford man’s brief stint in charge was an undoubted success.
“I have really enjoyed it,” said Collins after the games against Belgium and Switzerland.
“We have gelled a lot on and off the pitch. We have learned a lot. It has been a stress-free camp. John and the staff have been ten out of ten. I really rate them.
“There is a real mix of youth and experience with Brian Kerr in there. He has given a lot of experience.
"You can see there is a lot of hunger from the manager and the coaches who want to learn and want to get better and want to succeed.
“So having that mix, having that confidence, you can see on the pitch that we are a good team, we can play football. I speak highly of John.
"They have given us great tactics over the week and even when we were getting it wrong [against the Swiss] he helped us out.
“He tweaked it, and that is what we need. It is showing in a match that we want to learn. We are working hard.
"It has shown that we trust him. We can go and dominate a game. We need to find that cutting edge.”
Take out facile wins against Gibraltar and Ireland have now scored just three goals in eight games. It is undeniably a problem but one that was prominent during the Stephen Kenny era and even long before that.
Ireland simply don’t score enough goals and the simple fact of it is that they don’t create enough chances either.
It’s why they came up short in the scoreless stalemate against Belgium and in the 1-0 loss to Switzerland on Tuesday night.
“Very frustrating,” said Collins after the second of those games.
“We deserved a
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