Cork star disillusioned with international scene

Cork star disillusioned with international scene


October 22, 2005

Cork City striker John O’Flynn has expressed his disappointment with the international situation whereby home-based players are routinely overlooked for consideration for the Irish side.

O’Flynn has been one of the top strikers in the eircom League since returning to Cork from Peterborough three years ago, and has also operated with acclaim at under-21 international level.

However, he has never had the chance to play at senior level – an honour afforded in recent years to two other eircom League strikers: Jason Byrne and Glen Crowe, but only in friendly cameos.

O’Flynn’s former Turners Cross colleague Kevin Doyle made the breakthrough to the Irish senior squad within three months of quitting Cork for Reading – and O’Flynn feels that home-based players should be given greater consideration.

He told the Irish Daily Star: “Kevin had to go over to England and score three goals before getting a call-up.

“It sends out the message that the league is not good enough. If I were to score three goals in every single game here, I don’t think that would be as good as scoring three goals in four or five games over there.

“Brian Kerr’s decision to put Kevin Doyle in when he did said to me that the league isn’t good enough. I think that is saying you need to be playing in England to be good enough.”

Has it never crossed his mind he just might not be good enough?

His point is that Doyle wasnt good enough when he was playing Eurpoean football with an Irish team, but now that he gets a chance to play Hull, Brighton and Crewe he magically is good enough.

Fair point

He's right about the message it's sending out but I dont think O'Flynn should be in the squad tbh

Personally I think the EL players cant expect to play for ireland until they make it to the group stages of at least the UEFA Cup or at best Champions League.

Doyle is a classic example of the border line that exists though... He was doing fantastic for Cork and there wasnt a snowballs chance in hell of him pulling on the green but a dirt cheap transfer to a english club side and he gets the call, without a massive jump in his quality of play I might add.

At the end of the day the EL players have to prove to the ireland manager that they are good enough, the only way they can do that is produce the goods in Europe. That will silence even the most anti EL analytists (like Giles and Brady)

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Originally Posted by sligoman

He's right about the message it's sending out but I dont think O'Flynn should be in the squad tbh

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I agree

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Originally Posted by thejollyrodger

Personally I think the EL players cant expect to play for ireland until they make it to the group stages of at least the UEFA Cup or at best Champions League.

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Well he's [Doyle] got a much better chance at Cork than Reading! In fairness to Cork, they got on MUCH better in Europe this year than the likes of Everton and Celtic but you know full well that a winning Cork player would be behind a loosing Everton player in terms of the national team. Surely your club location shouldnt define what type of individual player you are (if so, then why is Spanish 2nd division Ian Harte in the squad?)

Bring back the Ireland B team play a mix of our squad players who rarely get on the pitch (Miller,Quinn,Kenny,Maybury,Mahon...) fringe players with potential that haven't yet made it into a squad or have just made small number of squads (Doyle, O'Conner,Delap, Lee, Henderson....) some young fellas that have or will soon pass the U-21 age (Stack, Kelly, McCarthy, Potter, Whelan, D. Murphy, Yeates...) and some top EL players (Houlihan, Kearney, Byrne (excuse my ignorance)...)

Then arrange friendly games against teams seeded in the 5th and 6th pots for the qualifiers. I'm sure none of the teams who have qualified for the WC will be tripping over themselves to play such teams. In fact perhaps there will be an opportunity for this B team to play a friendly or two against teams qualified for the WC. This exercise could be used to identify how good "the players with potential" in the English leagues are and also give the EL players a platform to prove they are as good an option as these players. The successful ones could then be promoted to the full senior squad and the new manager could give them a run in a few friendly games and eventually competitive games, if they continue to show they are up to this level.

I don't O'Flynn is currently good enough but who can argue with the Kevin Doyle example. Proven eL & U21 scorer suddently international standard just because Reading paying his wages.

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Originally Posted by pete

I don't O'Flynn is currently good enough but who can argue with the Kevin Doyle example. Proven eL & U21 scorer suddently international standard just because Reading paying his wages.

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But he still hasn't played for Ireland - a few months after he went to Reading, after he impressed and scored a few goals, after Morrisson and Reid got suspended, he SUDDENLY became making-up-the-numbers standard - good enough to be left on the bench while David Connolly was brought on:confused: As usual, people are looking for things to get offended about when there's no need to. It would have been a far bigger snub to the eL if Kerr had left Doyle out of the last two squads - the implication of that would be that he was an inferior player because he was developed through Pats and the eircom League.

I'm with Irish Praha. By far the best way to see how good ALL the fringe players are, Irish or UK (or even US - Ronnie O'Brien) based.