Tom English: There has to be hope Scotland can rival Ireland one day soon

IT’S no wonder that John Delaney, the chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, put a few bob behind the bar at a Tallinn hostelry on Friday night. For the craic was fairly mighty at the time.

The Republic of Ireland had just walloped Estonia 4-0 in the first leg of their play-off for Euro 2012, guaranteeing them qualification unless some bubonic plague descends on Dublin and wipes out the entire squad in the next few days. Delaney arrived at the Nimeta pub in Tallinn’s old town around midnight on Friday when the Irish fans were beside themselves with joy and swimming in rivers of stout in acclamation of the fantastic result they had witnessed earlier. Delaney put ¤2,000 (£1,710) – of his money, supposedly, as opposed to the corporate credit card – behind the bar and told the fans to get stuck in.

Stewart Regan might want to take note. If at any point in his reign Scotland manage to qualify – or, in the Republic’s case, as good as qualify – for a major championship then two grand is the bottom line donation to the party fund. The Tartan Army will demand it. A precedent has been set.

All the Republic need to do is stand up straight in Dublin this week and they will have made it. While Scotland were beating Cyprus in a game that really meant nothing at all, the Irish were getting the job done in Estonia in a match of huge significance, both emotionally and financially. The FAI stand to make a gross figure of about £8.5 million (approximately £6.8m in prize money and another £1.7m in corporate earners on the back of it) if, and when, they finish off the Estonians and secure their passage to Poland and Ukraine for the championships next summer.

Watching the game, a couple of issues emerged. First of all, how the hell did Estonia, a side so utterly hopeless at defending, manage to get this far in the qualification process, and, secondly, how on earth did the Republic manage to do what Scotland singularly failed to do?

Look at the Republic’s line-up in Tallinn. Shay Given in goal. Fair enough, a class act, but Scotland are hardly struggling in terms of decent goalies themselves. At the back, Richard Dunne and Stephen Ward of Aston Villa and Wolves. A pair of solid citizens there. Also, Stephen Kelly, who has made one Premiership start for Fulham this season, and Sean St Ledger, who has been toiling with Leicester. Not a lot between the Scots and the Irish on paper so far.

In the midfield, Damien Duff and Aiden McGeady, two fine wide players, no doubt about it. In the middle, Glenn Whelan of Stoke and Keith Andrews of Ipswich. Put Scotland’s best against those four and, again, there is not a lot of difference. Or shouldn’t be. And, up front, the irrepressible Robbie Keane, who is still banging in the international goals even though he’s now playing his club football in America, and alongside him, Jonathan Walters, who is enjoying an exciting season with Stoke. Ireland have the nod up front by a bit of a margin but, if you threw Steven Fletcher into the mix for Scotland, then maybe the gap would narrow somewhat. But let’s not go there again. Not for the moment anyway.

That Ireland team, or variations of it, played ten games in the pool stage and only lost one, a 3-2 home defeat to Russia. They went to Armenia and won 1-0, they went to Slovakia and drew 1-1, they went to Macedonia and won 2-0, got a 0-0 draw in Moscow and then won 2-0 in Andorra. Friday night’s victory was their sixth consecutive away match in this campaign where they have avoided defeat.

They haven’t exactly set the world alight with their football – they are, essentially, a fairly ordinary side – but they have dogged it out. At home, they only beat Armenia 2-1 but at least they beat them. They kept the show on the road, they made few mistakes.

There is justice in Ireland’s near-certain qualification for Euro 2012 when you consider the fate that befell them in Paris on the night that Thierry Henry’s handball, in the second-leg of a play-off, put the French through to the World Cup finals in South Africa at Ireland’s expense.

Ireland had been nuggety in that campaign, too. Including the two games against France, they played 12 times and only lost once. They played six away matches and didn’t lose any of them.

So that’s 12 away qualifying games on the bounce that the Republic have either drawn or won. It’s an astonishing achievement when you think about it. If we accept that there isn’t a big gulf in class between Ireland and Scotland in playing personnel then why is it that Giovanni Trapattoni’s team have all but qualified for one major championship and may have qualified for the last one had it not been for some Henry chicanery? The secret, you suspect, lies with the man in the dugout, the gnarled old pro, Trapattoni. His command of English is still humorously vague and the brand of football he gets from his team is a bit workmanlike for many people’s tastes. But he gets results. He understands his players and plays to their strengths. They have become incredibly hard to beat. One defeat in 20 pool matches across two tournaments! It’s a great feat of tactical organisation.

Trapattoni’s got 25 years on Craig Levein, but he doesn’t have a side that, on paper at any rate, is a whole lot better than Levein’s. So there has to be hope that what Ireland have done, Scotland can rival one day soon. It was another win on Friday for Levein and he is improving as a Scotland manager, no question. There’s a long time before the qualifiers start anew for Brazil. He might use the time to have a look at Trapattoni’s methods and think about how he is getting such results from a less-than-stellar squad.