Interesting stat that 5 of the 17 players used last night are playing, or have played, for eircom League clubs. Also O'Halloran and Stokes were attached to Cobh and Shels youth sides.
Republic of Ireland:
Colin Doyle (Birmingham City);
Stephen Kelly (Birmingham City), Alex Bruce (Ipswich Town), Alan Bennett (Reading), Stephen O’Halloran (Aston Villa) (Joe O’Cearuill Arsenal 73);
Andy Keogh (Wolves) (Joe Gamble, Cork City 69), Darren Potter (Wolves), Kevin Kilbane (Wigan Athletic) (Stephen Gleeson, Wolves 79), Stephen Hunt (Reading) (Anthony Stokes, Sunderland 69);
Kevin Doyle (Reading)(Shane Long, Reading 60), Daryl Murphy (Sunderland) (Joe Lapira Notre Dame Uni 85).
Stephen Quinn and Jonathan Douglas would have been called up if available and then you have Crowe and Byrne who have played in recent years and B international O'Donovan.
It's not an overwhelming number but it is a good sign of things starting to change (even allowing for the severely weakened squad). For almost 20 years there were only a handful of players in the Ireland squad with experience of playing in our own league (Paul McGrath, Roy Keane, Curtis Fleming, ???). I know a lot of people would prefer to have more current LOI players in the squad but the biggest problem, IMO, has been the lack of any connection between the league and national team. Hopefully we are starting to realise that it's not in our best interests to farm our best young prospects over to England and rely on their clubs to develop our future internationals.
