As many of you who follow me on social media know, despite being Irish, I don’t support the Irish national team.
In fact in the recent European Championships in France I was hoping for an Italy win but Portugal dashed my hopes of that.
My attitude towards the Irish national team has seen me get stick and abuse from Irish fans, at this stage I’ve been called every name under the sun because of it, but it’s water off a ducks back.
The Irish football world has been full of the joyous news this weekend that Martin O’Neill, Roy Keane and the rest of the Irish backroom team have finally signed the new deal that the FAI offered them last March.
Woohoo. Am I bothered? No. Why would I be. Why would I be excited about a national team who like John Delaney don’t give a rats ass about the League of Ireland.
Before you say it, yes I am aware that Gary Rogers has been part of the last few Ireland squads. He’s even made the bench on the last couple of occasions but did anyone think he was realistically going to earn a cap? If it didn’t happen against Oman it wasn’t going to happen at all.
Ireland boss Martin O’Neill in his most recent Ireland team announcement mentioned Dundalk’s Daryl Horgan. Well he belittled him in my opinion.
Why? Well his comments about Horgan.
“I am in constant touch with Stephen (Kenny) – well as often as you can – who is a very busy manager at this minute.
They have issues with fixtures because of their success, which is fantastic on one hand, and obviously a bit of a pain on the other hand.
But Horgan has done exceptionally well and he would have been (included) in normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances.
He would have certainly made the provisional squad — without a doubt.”
Those comments show that although Horgan is deemed good enough for the provisional squad by Martin O’Neill, he’s not not deemed good enough for the match day squad.
This to me is nonsense. If, and as some say, when Horgan moves to the UK, he’ll be part of the Irish set up from then onwards.
Another League of Ireland player who’s been over looked. and I’m amazed that both O’Neill and Keane have done so, is Cork City’s Sean Maguire.
Whilst he’s not getting the same exposure as Horgan and Rogers he’s quietly going about his business at Cork City.
For me Maguire is as good as any of the players called up to the Irish team for the latest set of World Cup qualifiers. His twenty one goals in all competitions including the Ireland U-21’s this season surely is enough to warrant at least a call up to the provisional squad?
Hopefully in the near future we’ll be seeing both Gary Rogers and Daryl Horgan, at least, playing in the green of Ireland.
If both players can sustain their current levels at Dundalk then along with Stephen O’Donnell and Sean Maguire they could be making up part of the Irish set up for years to come.
Or at least Horgan, Maguire and O’Donnell could be anyway. Sadly for Rogers, he’s coming towards the end of his career.
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