Burning Issue: Will Ireland still in be in contention for World Cup qualification next week?

Are the Boys in Green still going to be on the Road to Rio this time next week or are they going to be booking beach holidays for summer 2014. Two JOEs argue both sides.

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Sean Nolan says... unless we lose both games this week heavily, which I don’t expect, of course we will still be in with a shout by this time next week.

The mood of most of the country towards this Irish team right now is a shrug of the shoulders. It’s 159 days since we thumped the Faroe Islands 4-1 in Thorshavn and while the defeat to Greece, and the win over Poland, have been played since, the battering we took at the hands of Germany still looms over this team.

Because of that, many have already written off our qualification hopes and yet more are poised to put the final dagger in after the final whistle blows in Aviva on Tuesday night after the Austria game.

But let’s get a grip here. We’ve played three, won two and lost one, admittedly heavily, to the second best team in the world. Even allowing for that crazy 4-4 draw with Sweden we fully expect Germany to top Group C.

So that leaves a shootout for second spot between ourselves, Sweden and Austria. Any team with Zlatan Ibrahimovic has to be respected but a draw in Stockholm is surely not beyond this Irish team.

In fact, looking at the likely line-up that Trap will put out, you could argue he is going for more than the stereotypical away draw. Yes Paul Green’s likely inclusion won’t set any pulses racing but the likes of Seamus Coleman, Robbie Brady, James McLean and a front two of Robbie Keane and Shane Long is an attacking looking team to us.

Sweden are obviously good up front but they are leakier at the back than an IKEA colander. Ireland are more than capable of getting a goal or two there. Whether that will be enough to get all three points is a bigger question but let’s not build Sweden up into a combo of Barca and mid-70s Ajax.

Even if we do lose, as the bookies and most folks predict, a win over Austria next Tuesday would put us back ahead of them and leave Sweden as the team we’re chasing. The Austrians only drew in Kazakhstan (we won) and they have played them twice already and still only have four points to our six. A win next Tuesday has to be the goal, and if we have a point from Sweden even better.

Assuming we get just three, our chances of reaching Brazil are reduced but far from over. We will need to beat Sweden in Dublin in September and hope Germany turn them over in the final game in October but, to mangle an old phrase, there is many a slip twixt lip and World Cup, and those battles are for another day.

Ireland’s road to Rio will still be open by this day next week. It might have a few more twists and turns thrown in, but we won’t be punctured on the hard shoulder either.

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Conor Heneghan says... as much as it pains me to adopt a pessimistic attitude to yet another Irish national team in the wake of our worst ever showing in the Six Nations just gone, I think it will be sooner rather than later that we will realise that we are not going to make it a second international football tournament on the trot.

Mathematically, of course, the prospect of us doing so cannot be discounted and it is likely that, at least as  far as the table is concerned, we’ll still be in with a shout of taking the road to Rio once the crucial double header against Sweden and Austria has been negotiated.

But to adopt that outlook would be to ignore the patent signs of decline which have been evident since (and some would say even well before) the Euros, something that was rammed home in emphatic fashion when the Germans took us to school in the Aviva back in October.

Trap subsequently survived what had seemed like an inevitable axe after the Faroes game soon after, but has the mood surrounding the Irish team improved since? Hardly, and a terribly unconvincing friendly victory over Poland wasn’t ever going to change that.

Under normal circumstances, the trip to Stockholm on Friday would be something to get really excited about. We’re a point behind the Swedes in the table and seeing as they aren’t in action again until June after Friday, that game and the clash with Austria on Tuesday would give us the chance to consolidate our position as Germany’s chief challengers in a group they look likely to run away with.

But we’re hearing that Paul Green is going to start in central midfield ahead of a James McCarthy playing very well for Wigan at the moment. That Conor Sammon has been given the nod ahead of an albeit out-of-form Kevin Doyle, but a Kevin Doyle who has never let us down in the past.

That’s before we get into the very messy Doyle being left out by text message business, which followed on from the whole Stephen Kelly episode as the latest in a long line of communication disasters under our Italian boss.

Wes Hoolahan, the one man who just might offer something different, looks set to be on the margins once again and it’s hard to think of an Irish player, bar possibly Seamus Coleman (and that is going on one brilliant game against Man City), who is at the peak of their powers at the moment.

Finally, if you’re being honest, does the thought of the new and as yet unconvincing partnership of Ciaran Clark and John O’Shea having to cope with Zlatan not make you sweat just a little? What we wouldn’t do to be able to call on Richard Dunne right now.

Anything between three and six points over the two games will represent a very favourable return for Giovanni Trapattoni, but if we were to lose against Sweden and pick up only a point (or worse, God forbid) against a decent Austria side at home – a pretty feasible scenario – Sweden could potentially be six points ahead by the time we come face to face with them in September and that’s with away trips to Austria and Germany to come afterwards.

There’s enough negativity surrounding sport in this country at the moment without me further beating down on Ireland’s chances of qualification and while there is hope for the future (Clark, Coleman, McCarthy, Brady, McLean, Long, new manager) reasons to be cheerful aren’t exactly plentiful at the moment.

There’s a saying that goes ‘It’s not the despair, it’s the hope that kills you’ which is why I’m attempting to come to terms with what I believe will be our absence from the next World Cup now rather than when it eventually comes to pass.