Serbia 2 Ireland 2: Daryl Murphy rescues a point in Belgrade

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A lot of the Irish defending was body on the line stuff with Coleman, John O’Shea and Richard Richard Keogh hurtling themselves into the path of risky looking balls at one point or another.

But Ireland, energised by necessity, equalised on 81 minutes as Murphy soared above the Serbia defence to head home Brady’s corner.

“Expecting to control a match for 90 minutes away from home against Serbia?”. Shane Long had a good chance and if we had taken that, we might have taken a win, but it is good to get a point.

“We scored the goal early on in the match, we had a couple of little half-chances maybe to make it two”.

“I am delighted that we have got off the mark here in what was a very hard game for us”.

Mitrovic was involved again on the stroke of half-time as Tadic – who controlled Serbia’s attacking play throughout the game – found Antonio Rukavina on the right of the box.

“I’m delighted for him and obviously delighted for the team”.

“I had a second child, a daughter, just a few days ago and I would like to dedicate this goal to her”, he told Sky Sports. “We scored two goals away from home on a quagmire of a pitch against what I would still consider very decent opposition”.

“It was a unusual game, they got opportunities where nine times out of 10 they would have been expected to score – luck was on our side in these cases”.

The Republic of Ireland’s World Cup European Qualifier in Serbia will go ahead after a pitch inspection in Belgrade. Who knows who’s going to be fit? “I don’t think you realise how hard it is to come away from home in these conditions and it’s a terrific result for us”.

Republic of Ireland are playing in their first competitive fixture since reaching the knockout stages of Euro 2016 but it appeared that they could have made a wasted journey to Belgrade due to the wet conditions on Monday afternoon. Seamus Coleman (tonight’s captain) and John O’Shea both returned to training at the weekend and both start tonight.

“Seamus was excellent considering he hasn’t played and he was getting pretty exhausted towards the end as were a few of them”, O’Neill said.