A sour note to start with and it looked, as though, we were going to be in for another of those nights with the Irish players. First to make his way to the team bus last night was team captain Steve Staunton, but quickest off the mark on the journalist side was a chirpy local guy who caught his colleagues off guard by stealing in with the opening question of the night.

"How do you like our Estonian team now?" he asked the startled defender in much the same way as a father might ask a child on a particularly profitable Christmas morning just how they feel about their good friend Mr Claus.

"I don't like any other teams," replied Staunton to a suddenly somewhat deflated local. The rest of us stood by, memories of Cyprus where the team had collectively nipped out the back door suddenly turning our blood cold.

Staunton, to be fair, seemed to realise that he had misjudged the situation almost immediately. After a horrible moment's silence, he launched into an appreciation of how tough of a game the Estonians had provided for the still proud Group Two leaders. With international relations rapidly defrosted, our friend went on his way.

For the Aston Villa defender, it has been quite a few days. "I didn't expect to play in either of these games," he beamed, "and here I am, captaining the team and breaking the record for the number of caps." Somewhere, from a safe distance, Tony Cascarino started to heckle the man who had just eclipsed his tally of appearances and Staunton beamed a smile back at his long-time team-mate.

Most of all, though, yesterday's game was about the points, insisted Staunton, who was much more satisfied that his side had kept a clean sheet than disappointed that an early lead hadn't led to a few more goals. "Getting one was important and the second was nice, but after that what mattered was staying in front and so I'm very pleased with the way that it has turned out."

Niall Quinn, whose early departure with an injury that rounds off a difficult season for the Sunderland striker, echoed the sentiment. "You could be picky if you wanted to be and say that we should have gone on and scored a few more, but the most important thing was to get the three points up on the board and I think that we should be satisfied that we've managed that.

"Really, it's easy to say that the Portuguese are going to win all of their games by a load of goals, but then everybody would have expected the Dutch to come here and win by a load of goals, so we'll see how they get on as the rest of the group unfolds."

For his new striking partner he had, as usual, only encouragement, insisting that the only thing Robbie Keane's replacement could be faulted for was his abundant enthusiasm. "In a way, he works too hard and a couple of times I had to call him over and tell him to try and rest himself because he was dropping off everywhere. Generally, though, I thought he was fantastic.

I feel a little sorry for Robbie because he's done nothing wrong, but Damien's had a great night and I think that's he's shown that he's well able to play that role when it's required of him."