SOCCER/Rep of Ireland v Italy Lansdowne Rd, tomorrow. Kick-off: 7.30 Having missed Sunday's dramatic first ever top flight game at the JJB Stadium, Graham Kavanagh now looks to be Ireland's only serious concern for tomorrow night's friendly international against Italy.
The 31-year-old is still recovering from a foot injury sustained in a pre-season friendly against Morecambe and while he insisted yesterday he is hopeful of being sufficiently fit to play, he was one of three players to swim instead of train yesterday and will have to take some part in this morning's session at Lansdowne Road if he is to feature in any way during the game.
The other players restricted to the pool were Kenny Cunningham and Shay Given while Damien Duff and Stephen Carr sat out the training sessions and Richard Dunne retired early after aggravating a minor back problem. All, however, are expected to be available for selection tomorrow night.
With Roy Keane absent and Matt Holland also carrying a slight knock, the loss of Kavanagh would be a blow for Brian Kerr, but the team's primary area of weakness remains up front where the manager may well decide to aid Stephen Elliott's development at this level by giving him his third international start.
Elliott, with just one season of senior club football under his belt, could do with the experience, but he already looks to be on the verge of establishing himself as Ireland's next-in-line striker after a couple of promising performances.
"Stephen's really impressed us all over the last six months," said team captain Cunningham yesterday, "and there's a lot of people who believe that he can make an impact on the Premiership this year. I mean, people talk about Andy Johnson and how well he did last season, but Stephen's strong physically, he has a low centre of gravity, he's got quick feet and he's a quick finisher . . . he's everything it takes to really make a name for himself."
The partnership with Clinton Morrison is also, Cunningham insists, potentially an ideal one because of the contrast in their styles and his Birmingham City team-mate's progress over the past couple of seasons, he believes, has been an important boost to Ireland's ability to compete effectively at this level.
Whether it is quite enough to help Ireland beat France in Dublin in three weeks time we will be a little clearer on after tomorrow night, he observes, for the Italians should provide a decent enough measure of how the Republic can expect to do against Raymond Domenech's recently reinforced outfit.
"I think there are certainly similarities in technical terms because the Italians will be very comfortable in every area of the pitch, they have the ability to control the tempo of a game and they counter-attack very swiftly. The Italians should be a real test for us and that's no bad thing with the French game coming up so quickly. It's the sort of game where we'll face a lot of the same types of difficulties," said Cunningham.
The return of three prominent French players last week is likely to mean that the game on September 7th will be tough and Cunningham believes that, if anything, too much emphasis has been placed on the particular importance of Zinedine Zidane's decision to come out of retirement. "He's undoubtedly a world class player," he says, "he has wonderful feet, like hands almost, given the way he can manipulate the ball which always seems to be gone by the time you arrive.
"So the news last week is clearly important to them because they haven't found a rhythm to their game so far in the campaign. Zidane, though, has got all the headlines but (Claude) Makelele will add real strength to their team as well . . . Lilian Thuram too. The other thing," adds Cunningham, "is that Graham (Kavanagh) makes an interesting point about how the French might have to alter their shape in order to accommodate Zidane. We'll have to wait and see, until Wednesday's game (against the Ivory Coast) in Montpellier at least but it's going to be interesting to see."
The extent of Cunningham's own involvement in this week's game, meanwhile, might be somewhat restricted by problems with a punctured lung in pre-season and a slight neck injury picked up in Saturday's draw at Fulham. "There was a bit of an issue over some air having escaped into the chest cavity which they were a bit concerned about, but the lung, they tell me, has re-inflated itself so that seems to be okay," said the Dubliner with a hint of bemusement. "The neck just seems to be something I'm a bit prone to, I pick up a sore one three or four times a year. It's all just meant that I don't have as many minutes under my belt from pre-season, but I came through Saturday all right and I'd hope to be fine for the game. It's Italy, after all, and that adds a bit of spice to it all. There's been a lot of tickets sold for this and like everybody else we all want to be there for it."
