‘He has been absolutely phenomenal’ – Martin O’Neill hails Roy Keane’s

“It is the best moment of my career in any shirt – to qualify for the European Championship finals is unbelievable”.

O’Neill said: “I have had to make a few big decisions for players during the natural course of management, but the biggest decision was bringing Roy Keane in and he has been absolutely phenomenal, phenomenal”.

Edin Dzeko was left fuming with the officials following Bosnia-Herzegovina’s defeat to Republic of Ireland in the Euro 2016 play-offs. “I think if we get beaten here it won’t be through a lack of trying”.

The likes of Darren Randolph, Ciaran Clark, Richard Keogh, Robbie Brady and Jeff Hendrick have come into the side and shone during this campaign and can look forward to playing on Europe’s biggest stage next summer.

Bosnia stood between Ireland and their dreams, but Friday night’s 1-1 draw in Zenica, laid the foundation for Monday night and Walters’ coolly-taken 24th-minute penalty and sweet volley 20 minutes from time did the trick.

He also pointed to Ireland’s 1-0 win over Germany last month as a key moment of their qualifying campaign.

O’Neill went on to praise the other members of his backroom team, including Seamus McDonagh, Steve Walford and Steve Guppy, saying he “couldn’t be more pleased” with their contribution. “When you are long gone and retired, these are the moments that you will remember”. I don’t know. As I said, I’m enjoying this and it is great to be back working with Martin, the staff, the players and the FAI. I thought Scotland would struggle away to Georgia because we found it tough there and thankfully it swung back in our favour. “They have put heart and soul into the games, they’ve carried us through matches when maybe we’ve missed that piece of absolute genius”, O’Neill told a news conference.

“We did what was required and now we are off to France”.

Bosnia boss Mehmed Bazdarevic was unhappy with the performance of referee Bjorn Kuipers, who awarded a first half penalty against the visitors, and claimed his men lacked luck at crucial times.

“Stuff has come up but I have always been very focused on this job. Hopefully we can give whoever we play a good game”.

“I’ve never had a feeling like that before as I knew it was important to get us over the line but then if lads didn’t do the job tonight and Johnny hadn’t gotten the goals tonight it would have meant nothing to us”.