POST-MATCH REACTION:SIMON COX strolls through the mixed zone happy as a dad at a christening. Has he a minute? Yes, absolutely he has. Delighted to stop, brimming with chat.
With five minutes to go, the camera had picked him out as his name was announced over the tannoy stitched to the man-of-the- match award. He looked emptied, the strain of a helter-skelter 79 minutes telling on the back of no full match for an age.
By the time he reaches us, however, he’s re-energised and ready to have a small go for some mean things that had appeared in yesterday’s papers. Few would deny he earned it.
“I was pleased with my game,” he says. “Obviously, I haven’t played in a while and I went out there to give everything and leave everything on the pitch and make as many people as possible stand up and see what I could do. I saw the papers and that this morning and if that’s what you guys want to write – to say that it was a bad choice to pick me or whatever – well, I showed tonight what I can do.
“We’ve got to be very happy with that. We went into it with the right mentality, looking to play the right way and we got the right result.”
Kevin Doyle’s red card – allied to Robbie Keane’s injury that will keep him sidelined for up to six weeks – will definitely grease the wheel for someone over the coming month.
This was as good a time as any to put his hand in the air for everyone to see. It may be Cox, it may be Shane Long, it may well even be Jonathan Walters who was equally impressive when he came on here.
Cox has every right to expect the bottle to spin his way after this but he was agreeable to a fault afterwards last night. A team man to his core.
“If the manager chooses me, then great. If he chooses Jonny Walters or Shane Long, then I can’t complain. All I can do is what I did out there tonight – go out and empty the tank. I’ll be fully supportive of whatever decision the manager makes. We’re all singing from the same hymn-sheet here. We all want to get to the Euros and that’s all we care about.
“At the end of the day, our regular front two are outstanding players so you can’t exactly expect to displace them from the team. You can believe you will but you never really think you can. You give yourself the best possible chance every time you play and every time I’ve put on the green shirt I’ve given my best. Possibly with the lads being out, it gives the other lads and me a chance to get in there. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to play in the next one. I just love playing.”
Cox’s involvement in the game’s obvious turning point was brief but crucial. The sending off of Roman Berezovsky staunched everything Armenia were trying to do and gifted Ireland a flapping young boy of a goalkeeper as substitute. Armenia could reasonably claim to have been doubly knifed – both by the decision to penalise Berezovsky and the one not to call handball on Cox.
A lucky break, Simon?
“Yeah, Whelo’s lifted the ball over and it’s brushed my arm,” he says.
“I’ve tried to lob the keeper as I’ve seen him coming out. Whether it’s hit his arm or not I don’t know. It was all a bit too quick for me. I just started appealing with everybody else. Maybe it was a bit of luck for us and a bit unlucky for them. But we’ll take that in these sort of games.
“I think we’d rather take that sort of luck in the next game rather than this one. I think we would have come out with the right result this game regardless of whether they went down to 10 men or not, so if we were asked whether we’d rather that bit of luck in the next game instead of this one, we’d probably say yes.
“If he’d given a free against me, I would have thought it was a bit harsh.
“It wasn’t a deliberate handball at all. I just tried to bring it down and if it brushed my arm – well, it did brush me arm but some you get, some you don’t. Obviously, I got that one and they didn’t.”
