He may not be generally perceived as having the charisma for it but Howard Wilkinson's pre-match warning to his players would have been one of the pundit's calls of the year, if only it had been made over the airwaves.

"I told them before the game not to expect the early knockout, they had to be prepared to go the 15 rounds and that's what happened, it went the 15 rounds," said the England boss, who like his opposite number Brian Kerr doubles these days as his country's Technical Director.

If Kerr had chosen to turn to boxing for an analogy, he surely would have liked to have been in a position to cite the Rumble In the Jungle, all that sitting back early on, soaking the pressure and then, just when you've been written off, pouncing to put the opposition away. Unfortunately, as he admitted, what Ali did so effectively, his team couldn't quite pull off.

England survived the fightback - or were allowed to. "We did enough in the second half to win that game. We battered their goal but couldn't score. To coin a phrase, we pissed on them, but we didn't win the game and that is very disappointing," said a, well you've probably guessed it, a somewhat frustrated Irish manager.

The switches made over the course of the game had, he added, all served their purpose, namely countering the vastly superior ball winning abilities of the English through the opening half but his players had gone asleep at either end at crucial moments and everybody knows there's a price to be paid for that sort of carry on.

"It was a soft goal to concede all right but what's more disappointing is that it wouldn't have mattered if we'd taken our chances at the other end. We even had a great chance in the last minute when Liam (George) might have reacted a bit quicker to score but there seemed to be a bit of tiredness creeping in and you'd have to say that maybe they benefited from having an more comfortable opening game than us on Tuesday.

"Still," he concluded "there's still a glimmer hope of making the final so we have to look at Thursday's game with that in mind and I don't think we can be done out of a place in the third place play-off as long as we beat Cyprus."

Amongst the players there was still a good deal of shock as they left the ground that they had allowed a game they desperately wanted to win to slip away from them. "We just sat back too much and let them play around us," said Richard Dunne, adding that "then for the goal there was just a lack of concentration and suddenly it was three on one in the centre."

Ger Crossley looked and conceded to being "really gutted" as he wandered out towards the team bus. "We were under a lot of pressure but we stood up to them well. They were defensive and looked to get the ball up to the number nine (Lee Matthews) all the time. We'd seen it on the video of their first game, we knew what they'd do and we've lost anyway . . . it's an indescribable feeling."