Battling Ireland hold Serbia to 2-2 draw

Ireland made the flawless start, going ahead in the third minute after Hendrick's shot from the edge of the box took a deflection off Serbia skipper Branislav Ivanovic and nestled in the back of the net. It was a good, strong game to get something out of and get off the mark.

"I don't think anything of that", interjected an evasive O'Neill, who quickly tried to change the subject of the interview.

It can not be overlooked, however, that Serbia beat Ireland 1-2 in Dublin when the sides last met in a 2014 friendly and boast players of the quality of Branislav Ivanovic, Matija Nastasic, Nemanja Matic, Dusan Tadic and Marko Grujić in their ranks.

"I thought we thwarted them pretty well in the first half".

However, O'Neill's side face a tough task to get out of their 2018 World Cup qualification group, which includes defending champions Germany, Norway, Azerbaijan and San Marino, in addition to the Czechs.

But they kept going and although it was not pretty at times, they got there in the end.

"Naturally, we got off to a fantastic start early on in the game, I suppose before all the players from Serbia had touched the ball", O'Neill said.

However, on 80 minutes, sub Daryl Murphy bagged his first senior Irish goal to secure a point from Martin O'Neill's men. Delighted with the fact that we created chances as well.

"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".

They handicapped themselves, of course, by conceding a terribly soft goal before things had even settled but they dominated for the most part and had more than enough chances over the course of the night to make sure of the win.

"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.

It was announced that a pitch inspection would take place just 90 minutes before the scheduled kickoff but despite rain continuing to fall, it has been decided that the game will go ahead as planned.

Asked if he regretted not taking the game to Serbia earlier than the late onslaught, O'Neill said: "No, I don't see it like that, the game doesn't go like that, it just doesn't".