Cox hails Irish 'heroes'
Republic of Ireland striker Simon Cox hailed his team-mates as “heroes” after they defeated Armenia to book their place in the Euro 2012 play-offs.
Armenia, who started the match just a point behind Ireland in Group B, suffered a major blow in the 26th minute when they lost goalkeeper Roman Berezovsky to a red card for handball outside the area and the visitors fell behind just before the break when Valeri Aleksanyan put into his own net.
Ireland then doubled their lead in the 59th minute through Richard Dunne and, although Armenia received a double boost when Henrikh Mkhitaryan pulled a goal back and home striker Kevin Doyle was sent off, Giovanni Trapattoni’s men held on to seal their play-off spot.
Cox told Sky Sports 1: “It’s an unbelievable night for Irish football. We needed to get six points out of six (from the last two qualifiers), and we got them and gave ourselves the best possible chance.
“We’ve got what we wanted in the end, which is a play-off place. Luck of the draw now and we’ll take whatever comes.
“We came out with the biggest mentality that we could find and we played like heroes tonight, and we got the right result and the result we needed.”
Almost two years ago, the Republic’s World Cup dreams were ended by a handball decision – or rather a non-decision – as France scraped past them with the help of a large slice of good fortune.
That hurt has festered ever since, and the prospect of another crack at the lottery of the play-offs is one which brings as much trepidation as excitement and hope.
Looking ahead to the play-offs, Cox insisted past failures will not be on their mind, saying: “We showed tonight we can play as well as anybody and as I said it’ll be luck of the draw who we get, and we’ll take them and we’ll go full steam ahead into the game and we probably won’t even think about France or any other play-off defeat that we’ve had.”
