DARREN RANDOLPH shrugged his shoulders, smiled and urged reporters not to curse him with bad luck after the Middlesbrough goalkeeper turned in his 12th clean sheet of the season for club and country.

Randolph is away from Boro’s Rockliffe Park training base this week and his heroics for the Republic of Ireland prevented an embarrassing home defeat to neighbours Northern Ireland on Thursday night.

It meant he had shut the opposition out for the 12th time in 20 appearances for Middlesbrough and the Irish since the start of the season, an impressive statistic at any standard.

When he was reminded about his excellent record, he said, smiling: “Don’t jinx me!”

Randolph was the backstop for Ireland as Northern Ireland would have emerged from their trip south to Dublin with a victory in an eagerly-anticipated friendly across the Irish Sea.

The 31-year-old, who has impressed throughout his time at Middlesbrough and particularly under Tony Pulis, was busier than many might have expected against Michael O’Neill’s men.

Randolph had to produce excellent saves from Gavin Whyte and substitute Jordan Jones either side of the break to ensure his side came away with a 0-0 draw.

He said: “As a goalkeeper, they’re the nights you want every time you play. As a striker, you want the nights when you score a hat-trick.

“You want them every week, but it doesn’t always work out that way. I made the saves and kept a clean sheet, so it worked out for me tonight.

“I’m happy with them. They count for something in the game, they kept the score at 0-0.”

While Northern Ireland would be satisfied with the outcome, the Republic were less so given that it was the game took place in Dublin. Ireland have won just one of their last ten games and will head into their final Nations League B Group Four clash with Denmark in Aarhus on Monday without a competitive success since last October.

Former Sunderland manager Martin O’Neill, who has been linked with the Middlesbrough job numerous times throughout his career, has struggled to get Ireland going of late.

Randolph admitted: “It puts more pressure on everyone, if you’re not scoring, to keep them out and stay in the game. That’s football. Score more than you let in and you win the game. It sounds simple, but it can be difficult to do at times.”

Middlesbrough have the best defence in the Championship and sit second, two points behind leaders Norwich City. Pulis is looking at ways to strengthen his squad in January and QPR’s £4m playmaker Luke Freeman is still firmly in his sights.