Trap laughs long and hard at his own joke

4 weeks ago the good people of Limerick (for the price of €55 per ticket) were treated to Ireland being humiliated by Australia (the title refers to Trapattoni's demeanour after they scored their 3rd goal). Normally we might not be surprised to see our Antipodean cousins giving the Boys in Green a good beating at Thomand Park, but in soccer? Surely not. Alas, it doesn't say much for Ireland that we were well and truly beaten, indeed you could say outclassed, by an Australian team that didn't feature too many household names. Still, I was impressed with them-unlike Ireland, they looked like an international football team, as opposed to a mid-table Premier League team.

In Ireland's case, the whole doesn't seem to be greater than the sum of the parts any longer-we go as Shay Given, Richard Dunne and Robbie Keane, and, to a lesser extent, Kevin Doyle, go. The odd burst from Duff, McGeady or Hunt can produce a goal, but the lack of consistent end product from all 3 wide men means that you can't really say for sure what you are going to get from each one on any given night. And while both Dunne and Given are generally excellent, Keane does disappear on too many occasions.

And the rest? How John O'Shea was deemed a better player to keep at Man Utd than Gerard Pique (among others) is a mystery to me. Whoever partners Dunne at centre-back (whether it is St Ledger or McShane/O'Shea) is not up to the task. Kevin Kilbane has been a great servant to Ireland (I think I've even seen him singing the anthem), but to ask him to play left back on a regular basis is not fair to him, or Ireland's chances. A fair percentage of our goals conceded seem to stem from Kilbane's lack of ability to close people down and his lack defensive positioning awareness.

It is the Irish midfield that garners the most discussion, both in terms of who plays (Glenn Whelan) and who doesn't (Stephen Ireland). We have no-one selected at the moment who is capable of holding possession, or indeed acting as a link man between defence and attack. It is hard to say what Glenn Whelan brings to the party-a live body maybe, but not much else. I've seen Andrews play ok for Blackburn, but he's not good enough for this level, well not without someone of a higher standard alongside him. Darron Gibson hasn't looked great either-you would think Man Utd rate him highly enough or they would have let him go, but it's hard to see how much he will develop in their reserves or Carling Cup team.

Trappatoni seems to have brought a bit of order to the team-we no longer look like the shambles we did under Steve Staunton, but we don't look like we're developing much. We are at are worst when leading-our inability to hold the ball and our instinct to drop deep leaves us open to late equalisers or winners-the worrying thing is that this is a trend that was evident under Brian Kerr and has not looked like being reversed under successive managers.

Bulgaria will probably still be alive after this weekend given that they play Montenegro at home, but I expect Ireland to be one step closer to securing 2nd place in the group-if that is not motivation enough, then our 5-2 hammering in Cyprus under Steve Staunton and the fact that the Cypriots are without 2 of their better players through suspension should serve to focus the minds of the Boys in Green on coming away with a win. A win would go a long way to put us in a play off, and looking at some of the other possible 2nd place teams (Switzerland, Northern Ireland, Macedonia....), Ireland should still fancy their chances of making their first finals since 2002. Trap would surely be entitled to the last laugh if that turns out to be the case.