SOCCER:PAUL DOOLIN named what he reckons to be a strong Republic of Ireland squad for this month's Under-19 European Championships in Romania yesterday, but there is no place on the plane for Manchester United pair Robbie Brady and Seán McGinty or Everton's Shane Duffy, all of whom appear to have strayed offside with the former Drogheda United boss over the course of his first year in international management.
The 18-strong squad is almost unrecognisable from the group that travelled to Bulgaria in October for the first round of qualifying games with just four of the same players set to fly to Rome on Sunday for a week-long training camp before moving on to Bucharest.
Most have simply been dropped as Doolin got to grips with the options available to him and decided to remodel the squad but Brady, McGinty and Duffy appear to have been excluded on the basis of their failure to convince the manager of their commitment to the cause.
Brady captained the side in Bulgaria and was, says Doolin, initially called into the squad for the elite-phase tournament in Poland but repeated efforts to contact the midfielder came to nothing according to the manager who decided at that point to move on.
Duffy and Doolin, meanwhile, are rumoured to have had a falling out around the time of two friendly matches against Croatia in February while McGinty may be paying for staying with United for the FA Youth Cup final, possibly under considerable pressure from his club, when the Irish squad were heading to Poland.
Doolin was careful, indeed, to acknowledge there might have been mitigating factors in relation to one or more of the players, but he concluded he wants players “who want to play”, and pointed to the team’s rather remarkable record – they have lost one of 10 games, all abroad, since he took over, scoring 17 and conceding just five goals along the way – as evidence that those who have come in are well worth their places.
“You can call it beginner’s luck but to qualify in eight months is fantastic,” he said, “and we’ve played some decent teams.
“It’s different to club football. The fact that you don’t have your players for long means that your message has to be clear. Organisation is huge.
“All through the years people have said I was a conservative manager but I would have said it was about organisation. If you don’t concede, you’ve a great chance and if you are right defensively then you can score a lot of goals from that.
“I think this is a good group of players who have shown that over the last few months – particularly in Poland where we beat Italy, which always takes a bit of doing, and didn’t concede; we were the only team in the whole of the elite stage to manage that.”
The team’s reward has been to be drawn in what looks to be the somewhat easier of the two groups with a couple of the favourites – Spain and Turkey – set to face each other initially while Ireland take on Greece, the Czech Republic and host nation Romania with that second outing expected to be the toughest.
“Any fool could say, ‘yeah, we’re in it to win’ and it sounds great,” said Doolin when asked about the side’s prospects of emulating the Brian Kerr-managed team of 1998 which won this tournament in Cyprus, “but that’s not the way I operate. If we can get through to the knock-out stage then we’ll see what happens from there. But if we do that and don’t get cocky about it then we have a chance, of course we do.”
SQUAD: Samir Carruthers (Aston Villa), Matt Doherty (Wolves), John Egan (Sunderland), Kane Ferdinand (Southend United), Anthony Forde (Wolves), Jeff Hendrick (Derby County), Kevin Knight (Unattached), Aaron McCarey (Wolves), Seán McDermott (Arsenal), Conor Murphy (Bray Wanderers), Seán Murray (Watford), John O'Sullivan (Blackburn Rovers), Anthony O'Connor (Blackburn Rovers), Joe Shaughnessy (Aberdeen), Connor Smith (Watford), Declan Walker (Wrexham), Eoin Wearen (West Ham Utd), Derrick Williams (Aston Villa).
Group A schedule: Republic of Ireland v Greece (July 20th), Republic of Ireland v Czech Republic (July 23rd), Republic of Ireland v Romania (July 26th). Spain, Turkey, Serbia and Belgium are in Group B with the top two in each progressing to the semi-finals.
