Sam Curtis the hero as impressive Ireland claim crucial Euro U21 qualifying win in Turkey

Turkey 0-1 Republic of Ireland

The Republic of Ireland took a massive step towards a first-ever Euro Under-21 finals appearance following a richly-deserved 1-0 win over Turkey at the Esenler Stadium in Istanbul.

Having utterly dominated the second half, where Andy Moran and Joe Hodge excelled, it looked like they were going to have to make do with a creditable point, but Sam Curtis' neat finish in the 84th minute ensured that all three would be coming back on the plane with Jim Crawford and his players.

The impact was obvious as Ireland jumped back above Norway and into second in Group A. Italy remain two points clear in the race for an automatic spot for Slovakia next year, but Ireland – who welcome Latvia to Tallaght on Tuesday – have a game in hand.

After this result against an admittedly weakened Turkey, they will be confident of beating anyone with games against Norway and the Italians to come after that Latvia assignment next week.

It wasn’t quite Aidomo Emakhu’s 96th-minute winner when the sides met at Turner’s Cross in the first group game, but Ireland did leave it late to find the breakthrough, and had to weather a late Turkey storm as they pumped ball after ball into the area.

Weather it they did, and it’s now five wins from seven games.

Unsurprisingly, the opening skirmishes belonged to a home side who were backed by a boisterous crowd, even if actual goal-scoring opportunities were few and far between.

Highly-rated Fenerbahce midfielder Bartug Elmaz was pulling the strings in the early stages in a deep-lying role, continually spraying the ball right to the fleet-footed Cihan Canak who was constantly trying to run at Anselmo Garcia MacNulty, but he was getting very little change out of the Spain-born full-back.

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