LAST night's draw in Dublin was a decent result for Scotland but we've still got a lot of work to do before we can even start to think about qualifying for Euro 2016.

I wrote last week that I felt Gordon Strachan would not be overly disappointed if his team could take a point against the Irish having already beaten them in Glasgow. They battled hard to get it and were well worth it in the end but talk afterwards that we now had one foot in the finals was, for me, well wide of the mark.

Our next game away to Georgia will not be easy, and then we have home matches against Germany and Poland before finishing up away to Gibraltar. As things stand we are on course to finish third and probably a play-off so if we want to avoid that and get automatic qualification then we are going to have to dig out a few more big results. But at least we are in there fighting.

The match last night showed again that Gordon is a manager not afraid to make bold changes when things aren't going our way. I had expected Ikechi Anya to play from the start but he went instead with Matt Ritchie. When it was apparent that wasn't really working he didn't wait too long, putting Anya on at half-time and within two minutes he was setting up our equaliser. That's brave management and it paid off for Gordon once again.

It wasn't the most exciting of Scotland performances but they showed that they are capable of digging out a result when they need it. We saw at Celtic that Martin O'Neill likes strong, physical players when you think back to guys like Joos Valgaeren, Johan Mjallby, Bobo Balde, John Hartson and Chris Sutton. His Ireland team is like that too, with Daryl Murphy and Jon Walters preferred to Robbie Keane in attack as they possess more of an aerial threat, while the midfield was full of hard-working types too. They were always going to try to use their physical strength and height to bombard us and we had to graft hard to match that. I thought that if we could get through the first five to 10 minutes we would settle down after that and that's what happened.

I was surprised that Craig Forsyth started at left-back but I think that was also a nod to Ireland's strengths and an attempt to deal with any long diagonals into that area of the pitch. It also shows we've now got a few options for that position with Andy Robertson and Steven Whittaker also available to play there.

I think back to the win away in Croatia two years ago when we first saw signs of the team spirit that Gordon was trying to build and since then they have always come across as a group who all want to work hard for each other. Losing the goal to Ireland in such controversial circumstances was disappointing but you just knew this Scotland team wouldn't just lie down and accept their fate. When we fall behind in games now, you know you're going to get a response. When Ireland scored you knew it wouldn't be like Scotland teams of the past who might have crumbled and lost 3 or 4-0. They came back out fighting in the second half, got their goal, and then ended up earning the point that just about puts Ireland out of the equation. That was a lot to do with the camaraderie and togetherness they've built up over the years.

The way the game flowed didn't really surprise me. I expected we would sit in and be pinned back at times, and then try to hit them on the counter. It was only really when Anya came on that we really stretched them that way with his pace and trickery getting us further up the pitch. He gave us that out ball that we really needed as Ireland continued to come at us, especially after we equalised and then they needed to score again. And then the defence did their bit to shut them out.

So it's set up nicely for us after six games but we still have a bit of work to do. But at least we are still in with a real chance of qualifying. That's not something we've been able to say too many times at this stage in recent campaigns.