Steven Reid column: End result justifies means but we can improve on this

The group is only three games old but already we are talking destiny here.

Twice we have come back from the death to get superb results - Georgia away and now here.

It makes me think we can qualify. It makes me think we will go to France. The lift this result will give the lads is massive. You cannot put a price on it.

As an Irishman, I was off my seat when John O'Shea's goal went in. I banged my knee off the sofa and needed an icepack. I'm thrilled. I screamed so loud that the kids, Isla and Harry, were woken from their sleep.

Moments earlier, I was thinking this was an opportunity lost.

At half-time everything was going pretty much to plan. And then Toni Kroos stepped up a gear. He was the difference in the third quarter. His passing, his quality, his sheer presence.

His goal was excellent but you have to be critical of Ireland's defending. We stood off him. You don't do that, not to a world-class player, not when he is about to shoot. You put your body on the line. Stephen Quinn was closest to him but the guilt has to be shared. Bottom line is that was a bad goal to give away.

Frustrated

And it looked like being a point thrown away. We played well for 45 minutes. We frustrated them. We did our job. And as the game developed, I just couldn't get my head around how silent the German crowd were. This side won the World Cup for them a few months ago. They should have been on a high - players, supporters, everyone.

But it didn't seem that way. If anything, I had the impression the crowd lacked a bit of passion. And the German side lacked a bit of confidence.

You wouldn't have thought this if you looked at the stats. Thirty minutes played - Germany 64 per cent possession, Ireland 36 per cent.

In football, though, there are lies, damned lies and possession statistics. What those figures don't tell us is that Ireland could not have cared less about the fact Germany had so much of the play.

So often I've played with the underdog against bigger teams - the likes of Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool.

From the start we know we'll not have the ball. So we decide there is an area - either the halfway line or an invisible line inside our own half which we regard as the trigger point, where we decide it is time to press.

Ireland, at the start, appeared to be prepared to press high up the pitch. Yet as the game wore on and the Germans started playing at a higher tempo, they were forced to drop deeper and deeper.

Still, I didn't see this as a first cousin of the Trapattoni philosophy. Under Giovanni, we, as central midfielders, were told to stay on the toes of our centre-halves and never leave our station.

O'Neill isn't as conservative. In an ideal world, he would have wanted Ireland to have been realistic in terms of their approach, but to have decided, when the occasion was right, to really attack.

The trouble was that Germany were just too good in possession. Compared to their 2002 World Cup side, they have changed so much.

I played in that match and remember looking around at these huge men - Ballack, Hamann, Ramelow, Janckler - and it seemed their preference was to have the perfect physical specimen on the pitch, not necessarily the most talented players. Since then, their philosophy has changed. Now they play a bit like Liverpool did last year, making the pitch as large as they can by pushing their full-backs as high up the park as possible where they hug the touchline.

Additionally, their centre-backs stretch as wide as the penalty area, allowing a midfielder to come deep and act like a NFL quarter-back. Steven Gerrard did that job for Liverpool, Kroos did it last night for Germany.

And he did it brilliantly. And Ireland didn't know whether to put a man on Kroos or whether to sit deep behind the imaginary line I was talking about. As the game wore on, containment became the priority, particularly when Robbie Keane was sacrificed for Darron Gibson.

Then when we went a goal down, we threw caution to the wind. We played without fear and got our rewards. Maybe that is the way to play from here on in.

For so much of last night's game, you have to say that Ireland didn't help themselves either, by being panicky on the ball and gifting away cheap possession.

Sometimes these things happen. When you defend so deep, as Ireland increasingly appeared to do, you fall into the trap of winning possession and then looking up the field and realising you have no one to pass to.

And a Catch-22 scenario developed. Ireland needed to keep the ball to ease the pressure but by sitting so deep, they found it more difficult to counter-attack. Would Wes Hoolahan's inclusion from the start have made a difference?

It certainly did when he came on. A brilliant result even if it wasn't a truly brilliant performance.