COMPETITION for places in the Northern Ireland side may be intense but Jamie Ward insists he’ll ‘take one for the team’ even if that means perhaps ruling him out of the knock-out stages.
The Nottingham Forest attacker picked up a booking against Ukraine and another yellow card against Germany would prevent him playing in the round of 16 if progress is achieved.
Yet the 30-year-old is relaxed about the situation, saying: “That’s one of those things for me, I like to play on the edge. If it’s a case that I get booked and I miss the next game if we get through, then that’s just one of those things. It won’t be a silly booking, it’ll only be a booking that needs to be taken.”
Ward revealed that he might have particular reason to be provoked by any kicks to his shins: “The only thing I always do before a game is kiss my shin-pads, because they’ve got a picture of my fiancée and little boy [Jade and five-year-old Hudson]. I kiss them and tell them ‘Sorry for getting kicked!’. That’s the only ritual I have.”
One of the five players brought in for the Ukraine game, Ward performed prominently on the right side of midfield/ attack and acknowledged he was pleased with his personal display: “It was one of those games where I just felt good going into the game, felt good on the ball. Obviously there were some things I could have done a lot better, don’t get me wrong, but I knew I had to put a big performance in, work hard, and make sure the team came out on top.”
The expectation may be that the formation will be much more 4-5- 1 than 4-3-3 against Germany, but Ward insists Northern Ireland won’t simply be sitting back: “I can understand where you’re coming from with that, but there’s only one way that our team knows how to play. It’s obviously going to be a tough game, we’re not daft, but we can only control what we can do and not worry about anything else.
“Obviously Michael thought a different system would have worked in the first game – unfortunately it didn’t. But it wasn’t a major blow to us. We knew we had another game coming up really quick and we could change the system, do different things, and go back to what we were good at.”
Ward acknowledged there has been some tension in camp, but only because they’ve been together so long: “It’s been brilliant. They’ve surprised us with the facilities, we have no complaints on that side.
“Obviously you have a little bit of bickering between 23 men and stuff like that, but everyone gets on fine, can sit with everyone at dinner or go and get a coffee. There are no groups in that respect.
“Michael had faith in a lot of people by changing the team. As hard as it is for the people coming out of the team, we’re still all tight as a group. Obviously the ones left out are all disappointed [personally] but they’re delighted we’ve got the victory and that’s the main thing.”
A win is not required to reach the last 16, and although it’s difficult to play for a draw, Ward has confidence in the team’s defenders: “Definitely, we’ve not conceded in the first half for an awful long time, have we?”
In fact it’s been 22 games without letting a goal in before the break, since an injury time goal by Turkey in mid-November 2013.
“Obviously the longer the game goes on Germany probably become more of a threat, but we know we’ve got a good enough defence to deal with them. And we know if we get half a chance we might take it – hopefully we get that half-chance and take it.”
The bar has been raised within the squad and Ward agrees that if they don’t progress then “definitely we’ll feel disappointed”.
“That’s natural for a group of footballers but we can’t control what happens anywhere else, we just have to worry about ourselves. Hopefully what we do is good enough so we don’t have to worry about other results.
“We know we’re good enough to cause a few problems – it’s whether we do that on the night. “It was great to get here – and now we’re surprising people when we’re here”.
