After a poor friendly showing against Bulgaria last month, Northern Ireland responded with 4 goals (in the opposition’s net…) and one half of a good performance against a Georgia side wearing higher numbers than you’d see in an American Football game. (Probably. If you ever watched that sort of thing).
After a few half-chances, Norn Iron took the lead as Kyle Lafferty stroked home Steve Davis’ ball into the box. Healy soon added a second as the keeper made a hames of a (albeit slightly deflected) effort from outside the box, and 3 minutes later Laffs headed in his second, this time from a Healy cross. “Are you England in disguise?” Davis, clearly enjoying his football with Rangers these days, was playing his best NI match for ages. Keith Gillespie put in a man-of-the-match performance, despite a few wild balls. Stuart Olyott, who seemed to have come to the close of his NI career, was back in the squad and straight back into the team due to absences and his successful loan spell at Doncaster, and put in a good performance, winning stuff in the air, and getting into the box often to provide Keith with an extra body to aim for. A lot better than anything we’ve seen lately from Chris “hits the bar from 40 yards every other game but apart from that is pretty rubbish” Brunt. Evans was poor though.
So 3-0 at half time, happy days. Time to blood a few fringe players. Not-looking-so-Worthless resisted the temptation to tinker overly, and only brought on Feeney (so much for a Laffs hattrick) and Crewe’s Michael O’Connor. However, whether it was the loss of DJ, or the fact we already had the game sewn up, the second half was pretty terrible from start to finish. O’Connor’s first touch was a foul, and then on 55 minutes he blocked a cross with his upper arm to concede a penalty. Maik duly pushed it onto his right-hand post, but the ball rebounded to the striker who was left with a simple tap-in, but stumbled. However, with their chance fully gone, Sir David Healy, dived in and put the ball in his own net. Think it’s taking the ‘everything he touches goes in’ concept a bit too far…
The rest of the half was truly awful. The defending was non-existent, and we just invited them to come at us, but not even their bright looking number 77 could trouble Maik Taylor. The only other real observations I would make are that their keeper looks like Napoleon Dynamite, and that Iashvili is one ugly boy.
The Linfield duo of Gault and Thompson came on, followed by Alan Mannus, and Thompson got a goal at the end, as A Hughes headed on a corner and it went in off Thompson’s hand.
So if the first half performance is anything to go by, very promising. But if the second half shows all we have in reserve – not good. Although it’s hard to be negative after scoring 5. Er, I mean 4 – sorry David :-P
NORTHERN IRELAND: Taylor (Mannus), Baird, Hughes, Craigan (McAuley), Evans, Gillespie, Johnson (O’Connor), Davis (Gault), Elliott, Healy (Thompson), Lafferty (Feeney).
A Wee Spot in Europe 