The six-and-a-half-year saga of Stephen Ireland’s international exile could finally be resolved next week when Republic of Ireland manager Martin O’Neill hopes to sit down with the midfielder and establish once and for all whether he wishes to return to the fold.
O’Neill said he has met with the other Stoke City players but wanted to speak with Ireland alone and when the season was over, which he still intends to do.
If the 27 year-old convinces the northerner he wants to be involved again then he could well be added to the provisional squad O’Neill named for the games against Turkey, Italy, Costa Rica and Portugal yesterday.
“You either feel as if you want to come back or you don’t,” said O’Neill yesterday when asked about the former Manchester City and Aston Villa player. “It’s as simple as that. This is not something where you think ‘I will come back in October time’. Absolutely, this is it.”
Pressed on the attitude of the other players towards Ireland, O’Neill said: “There is always a bit of a wry smile when Stephen is mentioned but the boys... listen, they all think he can play.”
O’Neill clearly thinks so, although, he always seems at pains to make clear, not to the extent that Ireland can expect to be an automatic first choice.
The strong sense here was he would not be but that he would be welcome if prepared to accept the manager’s estimation of his place in the pecking order and work hard to win his place. If not, the attitude seems to be, then so be it.
Despite 32 players making this squad, Ireland was just one of many names missing, with Richard Dunne having ruled himself out, Darron Gibson, Andy Reid and Keiren Westwood all missing out through injury and Sean St Ledger omitted, at least for the moment, even though he had been in touch asking to be involved after a difficult year at Leicester City.
There are no fresh faces in the squad, with Rob Elliott and Shane Duffy, both of whom have been in squads before, the only uncapped players but O’Neill isn’t ruling anything out and says he may head to Tottenham on Sunday where, on the one hand, Jack Grealish may feature again for the visitors but, perhaps more pertinently, Harry Kane, whose father is Irish, will most likely play some part for the Londoners against Aston Villa.
The manager wouldn’t confirm the interest in Kane but admitted wanting to see a player who is eligible to declare, and Kyle Naughton, another under-21 international, is the only other possible target.
Whether anyone is added out of the blue or not, the 32 players named yesterday may be divided into three groups for the forthcoming games, with a core segment of the squad used for all four but others being brought in for either the Dublin/London leg of things or the United States trip. O’Neill acknowledged Robbie Keane is most likely to be involved only in America.
Roy Keane, will be involved for all four but he will miss some of the training in advance of the Turkey game, although O’Neill insists he will fly back from the Champions League final in Lisbon in time for the match itself.
O’Neill said he had known Keane had TV commitments when he persuaded him to take on the assistant’s role but insisted the Corkman’s “enthusiasm for this job has never waned”.
There might some day, he acknowledged, be the offer of a management job that Keane feels unable to turn down but his strong sense, he said, was the former Manchester United star will see the campaign out.
As for him and the club jobs he keeps being linked with, he said: “I have made a commitment here and this is what I want to do”.
In terms of the weeks ahead, he said, he might add to his coaching staff, with Steve Walford amongst the candidates but John Robertson is “very happily retired”.
And O’Neill says that once the Ireland games are out of the way he will head to Brazil to
Beyond that, he confirmed a game has been lined up for September 3rd at the Aviva in order to provide final preparation for the European qualification campaign that kicks off in Georgia the following Sunday.
The FAI say no opposition has been confirmed but the Omanis were trumpeting at just around the same time that they’re coming to Dublin.
Republic of Ireland squad:
D Forde (Millwall); D Randolph (Birmingham City), R Elliot (Newcastle Utd), R Keogh (Derby County), M Wilson (Stoke City), S Coleman (Everton), J O’Shea (Sunderland), A Pearce (Reading), S Kelly (Reading), D Delaney (Crystal Palace), J O’Brien (West Ham), S Duffy (Everton), J McCarthy (Everton), J Hendrik (Derby County), C Clark (Aston Villa), S Ward (Brighton), G Whelan (Stoke City), P Green (Leeds Utd), A McGeady (Everton), A Pilkington (Norwich City), J McClean (Wigan Athletic), S Quinn (Hull City), D Meyler (Hull City), W Hoolahan (Norwich City), R Keane (LA Galaxy), S Long (Hull City), D Murphy (Ipswich Town), J Walters (Stoke City), K Doyle (QPR), A Stokes (Celtic), S Cox (Nottingham Forest), C Sammon (Derby County).
