Nathan Collins believes the Republic of Ireland have put \u201cpride back in the shirt\u201d over the course of this international break.<\/p>\n
After a battling performance in Portugal, which ultimately ended in defeat thanks to R\u00faben Neves injury-time header, Ireland again dug deep and got their rewards with a narrow 1-0 victory over 10-man Armenia at the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
That victory has helped to banish most of the demons from the opening round of World Cup qualifiers, which saw Heimir Hallgrimsson\u2019s men draw 2-2 at home with Hungary before falling to that infamous 2-1 loss to the Armenians in Yerevan.<\/p>\n
\u201cHungary we were alright. We were average, second half we were very good. It’s hard to say anything about that. Armenia away was a big hiccup,\u201d admitted Collins.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren’t at it all. We weren’t at the races but it’s a tough place to go to at the same time. I’m not expecting Hungary to go over and walk them over really there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it would be a tough test for them as well. So, we needed to dust ourselves off. Get that pride back in the shirt. Get that belief going again in Portugal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we got a bit of belief from that. We felt better as a team, as a unit, as everything defensively.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to bring a defensive aspect to what we’ve done in Portugal and then finish it off with a bit of our threat up front.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand the fans want us to be front-foot and on it all the time but sometimes the best thing is just to be solid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we’d done that first half. We were solid. We didn’t create anything from when they had the ball. We were probably a bit passive. We didn’t get up to them enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when the fans are on it, it’s tough for any team. We’ve seen it before. We’ve seen how big teams come here and they struggle with it. It’s unbelievable.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir support is immense. When they’re with us, you really feel like you can’t be beaten.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s win over Armenia, coupled with Hungary\u2019s late heroics to snatch a draw away in Portugal on Tuesday, means the Boys in Green may even need to beat the Portuguese in Dublin and the Hungarians in Budapest next month to secure a playoff berth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn’t matter,\u201d the Irish captain said of the permutations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you bring Portugal to Aviva, I think the aim is to win the game no matter what.<\/p>\n
\u201cHungary away, the last game of the campaign, anything can happen. But Portugal at home, it’s going to be an exciting game.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could say they (Portugal) could change up, the squad they are outrageous no matter what players they have.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s the same thing for us though. We need to win. I’m comfortable enough with big teams coming here. I think we can perform against them. I think the fans get excited for it. I think it’s a great challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nathan Collins believes the Republic of Ireland have put \u201cpride back in the shirt\u201d over the course of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1113,61,60,2539,5782,43,5783],"class_list":{"0":"post-81149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-fai","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-league-of-ireland","12":"tag-local-soccer","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-premiership"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}