World Cup News round-upAn attempt to sort out problems with both ankles that have troubled Richard Dunne through a good portion of the season means that the central defender will not be available to manager Brian Kerr for either of the Republic of Ireland's World Cup games at the start of June.
The Dubliner, who has been a consistently strong performer for Manchester City this season, had an operation on one of his ankles on Wednesday and will undergo an operation on the other next week after which he faces six weeks of recuperation. The intention is that he will be fully fit for the new season.
"From a personal point of view I could have said that I wanted Richard to wait until the end of the season," said Stuart Pearce whose long-term position at the club has yet to be confirmed.
"But I have to be honest to him and to the club and I said get it done so that he can be in top shape for the pre-season.
"The way he has been playing it might have helped my job prospects to have had Richard available for the last two games of the season," he added.
"But strangely enough there will probably be more pressure on the new manager of this club come the start of next season than there is at the moment.
"It was a commonsense decision from myself to get Richard in for the operations sooner rather than later."
The decision may make perfect sense for everybody at the premiership outfit but it is still something of a blow to Kerr. The Ireland manager has several options at centre back but Dunne has been in the best form of his career in recent months and might have been expected to push Andy O'Brien for his starting place.
Damien Duff, meanwhile, still looks likely to be available for the game against Israel and the Faroe Islands despite missing Chelsea's last couple of games due to a hamstring strain. The Irish winger curtailed his involvement in his team's final training session before Tuesday night's defeat by Liverpool early on and there were reports that the club doctors felt that, while the problem was not yet serious, any real exertion would almost certainly lead to longer-term difficulties.
With the league won, however, and the Champions League final something to be watched by the Chelsea players on television, it is possible that Duff will not feature for the club again this season in which case, suggests his adviser, Pat Devlin, he should be available for international duty.
"It's hard to know what they will do - and there might still be a post-season tour - but there doesn't appear to be any great reason to play him," said Devlin. "I'm not a doctor but it's a hamstring and I would have thought that if he gets some rest there's no reason to foresee a problem.
"It's an Ireland game," he added, "and given how much Damien always wants to play in Ireland games, he'll do everything in his powers to be there."
If Duff is rested between now and the end of the campaign he is unlikely to aggravate the hamstring problem but, given that the World Cup qualifiers are a month away, the former Blackburn player could lose a little bit of his sharpness.
In the circumstances a post-season tour that included a couple of light friendly games could be the best case scenario from an Irish point of view although Kerr would probably settle for having a week to work with Duff during the build up to the qualifying games.
