Italy vs Republic of Ireland match report: Robbie Brady's late strike seals another famous victory over Italians

Italy 0 Republic of Ireland 1

Brady wheels away in jubilation after scoring his crucial winner (Getty)

Martin O’Neill was so overwhelmed by the end that he heard the referee’s whistle and made to shake Antonio Conte’s hand, which the Italian accepted. The players stopped and stared at the pair of them. The game still had a minute still to run.

Such was the dizzying finale of the game which he said was his greatest in football. The sweat dripped from the Irish players in buckets on an evening of quite intense humidity and just when it seemed Wes Hoolahan had spurned that a heaven-sent opportunity, a feat to make the heart soar: a goal four minutes from time to halt what had seemed to have become a drift to elimination. Instead they venture on, to face France in Lyons on Sunday.

The goal will be replayed for many a long year and was a strike of sublime simplicity: An expertly measured cross from the right by substitute Hoolahan, recovering from the miss that threatened to haunt him for all his days, which Robbie Brady bravely leapt to find with his head. It delivered his nation the win, which was the requirement against the side who had already won this group. They said that that the 1-0 World Cup win over Italy in the 1994 World Cup would never be eclipsed where Italy was concerned. No longer.

It was the reward for the spirit of work and resolve, always at the core of a team sent onto a pitch by O’Neill and though the Italy manager Antonio Conte was afterwards miserly in his assessment of the Irish display, the result was a deserved one. Technically inferior Ireland certainly were but as O’Neill observed, his Irish team “neutralise that disadvantage.” The two-year journey to Lyons on Sunday has been full of his side not knowing when they’re done for.

It was Ireland’s fourth tournament encounter with Italy – there is no team they have played more in finals – though it was that broiling afternoon in New Jersey 22 years ago that they were trying to summon the spirit of. Antonio Conte was on the bench that day when the Irish – Ray Houghton – stuck 11 minutes into their World Cup campaign, did the job.

O'Neill, right, congratulates Brady on his winner (Getty)

This was the other end of the spectrum of course – the last chance saloon for a side whose failure to drive home their lead against Sweden had looked fateful from the start. Only a win would take the team through.

This time the nation were staring down the barrel of elimination, though, and he changed the side radically. Hoolahan, Glenn Whelan, Ciaran Clark and even the 34-year-old captain John O’Shea dropped – three of those four personnel being players who had made this Irish side look like an old one. There had been a clue to the manager’s desire for something less lumbering in his pre-match press conference. “Fresh”, “alert” and “energy” were what he’ d said he’d wanted. The younger legs were needed. It was an intensely uncomfortable night in northern France, compounded by the stadium roof being kept on to protect a poor surface from the threatened thunderstorms.

The strategy was as much muscular as tactical: hit the Italians very hard. There were five stinging Irish tackles put in within the first ten minutes, the most eye-watering Jeff Hendrick’s jump with two feet into Alessandro Florenzi. He reached the ball but cleared the player out and was lucky to avoid a yellow card. Shane Long received one for trying to provoke a reaction from the goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu.

Ireland were simply not a side blessed with creative qualities, and it was the aerial route they decided to take against an Italian defence which never looks to be lacking the resources to deal with that. Opportunity did knock, as O’Neill’s players commanded long periods of possession with an inordinate workrate.

Hendrick, the Derby County player who has had a good tournament and impressed against Sweden, shuffled in front of Thiago Motta and shifted a clean shot which flew two inches wide after ten minutes. Daryl Murphy’s header from Robbie Brady’s corner drew a fingerrtip save from Sirigu after 20.

Ireland celebrate their late victory in front of their vocal support (Getty)

For as long as the Irish players could retain parity, hope remained of a break in their favour, though a seemingly fateful moment came and went a minute before half time. The right back Federico Bernardeschi barged into the back of McClean as he shaped to move through the Italian area and though the infringement seemed clear – a pronounced movement of Italian’s elbow – the referee turned down the fervent penalty appeals.

The Irish were incandescent, though it was a first half in the upper range of O’Neill expectations. It had taken Italy 40 minutes for Ciro Immobile to get their first shot away.

The question was whether the Irish, commanding well over 60 per cent of possession, could maintain the intensity. The Italians always looked to be playing within themselves; passengers barely interested in the competition, though they barely needed to engage with the threat encircling them. By the last half hour, it seemed that an element of luck would have to enter the Irish occasion: a defender’s deflection to skew one of McClean or Coleman’s efforts from range. Hoolahan’s miss seemed to have waved goodbye to the round of 16. “He would have lost his head in the dressing room,” had that been the final strike of the game, O’Neill later joked. Conte was able to thrown on Lorenzo Insigne, who expertly curled a shot against the base of the right hand post.

The terrace chants that rang up for the ‘boys in green’ shortly before the denouement were offered in pride, rather than euphoria. Then Brady made his dramatic leap and changed all that.