Under-21 Squad

**TheBoss** · 06/09/2016, 4:30 PM

Surely Sean Maguire has to be starting?

**gastric** · 06/09/2016, 11:48 PM

Lost 3-2 in a dramatic game it seems, the Serbs also got a goal from a penalty. Al ittle info here on our new goalkeeper.

http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...-35027280.html

**SkStu** · 06/09/2016, 11:49 PM

Lost 3-2 for the record.

Were 2-0 and 3-1 down. Goals from O'Dowda and Maguire and plenty of chances to get the draw apparently.

**Charlie Darwin** · 08/09/2016, 11:26 PM

Eligible through his dad's grandparents? Foreign births register at work I assume.

**Olé Olé** · 09/09/2016, 9:22 AM

Noticed that too. I assume they meant to say his grandparents or his father's parents and got mixed up. Otherwise, that'll be his only call-up for us as he'd be ineligible surely.

**Dodge** · 09/09/2016, 11:32 AM

http://www.fai.ie/ireland/news/manch...ht-at-u21-call

The youngster was born in Stretford and often heard the crowds at Old Trafford from his house when he was growing up but with grandparents from Galway he was always aware of his eligibility to play for Ireland.

There's more on his background there but the morale of the story is don't trust the online Indo...

**tetsujin1979** · 05/10/2016, 3:51 PM

Sqaud for the qualifier against Serbia on Friday: http://www.fai.ie/ireland/news/king-...a-clash-at-rsc
Lawlor has since been called into the senior side, according to today's Indo Eric Grimes and Stephen McGuinness have been called up as replacements

**Closed Account** · 07/10/2016, 4:23 PM

Looks a strong team.

2019 U21 champ is for players born after 1/1/1996.

It is the last game for
Eoghan O'Connell
Kevin O'Connor
Darragh Lenihan
Thomas Hoban
Alan Browne
Courtney Duffus
Eric Grimes
Sean Kavanagh
Sean Maguire
Sean Hoare

Players for next campaign
Liam Bossin
Kieran O'Hara
Liam Kinsella
Shaun Donnellan
Kevin Toner
Noe Baba
Daniel Cleary
Bobby Moseley
Jack Byrne
Josh Cullen
Harry Charsley
Connor Dimaio
Jake Mulraney
Olamide Shodipo
Reece Grego-Cox
Josh Barrett
amongst others.

**tetsujin1979** · 07/10/2016, 4:52 PM

Live text commentary here: http://www.uefa.com/under21/season=2...&match=2016148

**Closed Account** · 07/10/2016, 5:52 PM

Goal Duffus

Serbia miss peno

Equaliser

Ah 2-1 Serbia

**Kingdom** · 07/10/2016, 8:20 PM

I'd like to see us bid to host the 2019 Championships. We need to start building up a resilience in the underage tournaments again.

**samhaydenjr** · 08/10/2016, 2:44 AM

Originally Posted by joe_denilson

Looks a strong team.

2019 U21 champ is for players born after 1/1/1996.

It is the last game for
Eoghan O'Connell
Kevin O'Connor
Darragh Lenihan
Thomas Hoban
Alan Browne
Courtney Duffus
Eric Grimes
Sean Kavanagh
Sean Maguire
Sean Hoare

Players for next campaign
Liam Bossin
Kieran O'Hara
Liam Kinsella
Shaun Donnellan
Kevin Toner
Noe Baba
Daniel Cleary
Bobby Moseley
Jack Byrne
Josh Cullen
Harry Charsley
Connor Dimaio
Jake Mulraney
Olamide Shodipo
Reece Grego-Cox
Josh Barrett
amongst others.

I agree with that - looking towards the senior team, I reckon there's four players in that squad who you could reasonably promote to the senior squad immediately based on being fairly well established at Championship level and could do a decent job for us - Hoban, Lenihan, Shodipo and Browne - although I acknowledge they'll probably have to wait to the end of the season at least. O'Connell and Byrne could put themselves into the reckoning over the next couple of the months if they can get more consistent game time at Celtic and Blackburn (I know some might think Byrne in particular should be ahead of the likes of Lenihan and Shodipo but I think he's slipped just behind them for now, anyway).

Cullen, DiMaio, Mulraney, Maguire and Kinsella are all playing a level below where we could look at them as serious contenders for a call-up, but they seem to be fairly well established in their respective divisions so if they continue to do well, they may get an upward move within the next twelve months and become options. And I think Charsley and Duffus are pretty well regarded at Everton and will hopefully get a chance to prove themselves at senior level soon.

Together with the promotion to the squad fringe of Lawlor and O'Dowda, with other youngsters making progress and with the likes of Hourihane, Williams, Cunningham, Judge and Egan pretty much ready to go now, it looks like we will have a squad with greater depth over the next couple of years.

The question is how and when do we blood these players in? This should actually be a major task for the management team (perhaps more important than recruiting new players - oh dear, I've just become TOWK

) but there's a problem in that we don't have the opportunity to do that. The FAI announced an end-of-season friendly against Uruguay today, but it's scheduled to be only a week before the Austria game and, as a result, will likely be used for fine-tuning and preparation for that vital qualifier). So unless there's a tour next summer, it's going to be very hard to bring more than a couple of these into the fold in a planned, non-injury-or-retirement-crisis manner.

**TheOneWhoKnocks** · 08/10/2016, 11:06 AM

Look how long it's taking Conor Hourihane, Matt Doherty and John Egan to get a look in.

Shodipo only has about seven games at senior level.

We are probably one of the oldest - if not the oldest - Intl teams in Europe.

It's going to be ages before any of these lads are blooded.

The average Irish player makes their Intl debut at what, 25?

**tetsujin1979** · 08/10/2016, 11:37 AM

Originally Posted by TheOneWhoKnocks

Look how long it's taking Conor Hourihane, Matt Doherty and John Egan to get a look in.

Shodipo only has about seven games at senior level.

We are probably one of the oldest - if not the oldest - Intl teams in Europe.

It's going to be ages before any of these lads are blooded.

The average Irish player makes their Intl debut at what, 25?

22, according to the numbers I have

**SkStu** · 08/10/2016, 2:38 PM

Originally Posted by samhaydenjr

I agree with that - looking towards the senior team, I reckon there's four players in that squad who you could reasonably promote to the senior squad immediately based on being fairly well established at Championship level and could do a decent job for us - Hoban, Lenihan, Shodipo and Browne - although I acknowledge they'll probably have to wait to the end of the season at least. O'Connell and Byrne could put themselves into the reckoning over the next couple of the months if they can get more consistent game time at Celtic and Blackburn (I know some might think Byrne in particular should be ahead of the likes of Lenihan and Shodipo but I think he's slipped just behind them for now, anyway).

Cullen, DiMaio, Mulraney, Maguire and Kinsella are all playing a level below where we could look at them as serious contenders for a call-up, but they seem to be fairly well established in their respective divisions so if they continue to do well, they may get an upward move within the next twelve months and become options. And I think Charsley and Duffus are pretty well regarded at Everton and will hopefully get a chance to prove themselves at senior level soon.

Together with the promotion to the squad fringe of Lawlor and O'Dowda, with other youngsters making progress and with the likes of Hourihane, Williams, Cunningham, Judge and Egan pretty much ready to go now, it looks like we will have a squad with greater depth over the next couple of years.

The question is how and when do we blood these players in? This should actually be a major task for the management team (perhaps more important than recruiting new players - oh dear, I've just become TOWK

) but there's a problem in that we don't have the opportunity to do that. The FAI announced an end-of-season friendly against Uruguay today, but it's scheduled to be only a week before the Austria game and, as a result, will likely be used for fine-tuning and preparation for that vital qualifier). So unless there's a tour next summer, it's going to be very hard to bring more than a couple of these into the fold in a planned, non-injury-or-retirement-crisis manner.

Great post Sam. As I've said in a couple of posts at this stage, it should be happening yesterday. I think it should have happened on a small scale at the euros with maybe two or three call ups but I'll accept that such a move would have been unlikely however I can't for the life of me understand why MON and RK didn't overhaul the squad at the beginning of this campaign. They easily could have switched out 5 or 6 old or crap players for young up and comers without damaging our qualification hopes in a material way. Instead we find ourselves in a situation where, to your point, we can't introduce a number of decent players for another two(ish) years. I know we have O'Dowda and Duffy and there's the Arter and Judge efforts but it's not enough for me.

To TOWKs point - and I don't feel as strongly about it as he does - how must it feel to these players to see the management team make public overtures to get Hogan to declare and be called into the squad while they are putting in a similar effort, playing to the same or higher level, are committed to us and just remain on the outside expecting to patiently bide their time for the likes of Pearce, O'Shea, McShane, Wilson, Whelan, Quinn, McGeady, Meyler, Walters and the likes to be dropped when arguably 5 of the 9 there could or should have been dropped two years ago.

We have very good players out there that we need to intentionally start pulling through. We missed a trick at the start of this campaign.

**samhaydenjr** · 09/10/2016, 5:11 PM

Originally Posted by TheOneWhoKnocks

Look how long it's taking Conor Hourihane, Matt Doherty and John Egan to get a look in.

Shodipo only has about seven games at senior level.

We are probably one of the oldest - if not the oldest - Intl teams in Europe.

It's going to be ages before any of these lads are blooded.

The average Irish player makes their Intl debut at what, 25?

I know it might be a bit debatable putting Shodipo ahead of, say, Jack Byrne, especially as I myself usually like players to have played more at Championship level or have a significant number of games at a lower level under their belt at least before consideration (as Byrne had at Cambuur - I think when you look at the Eredivisie, it's kind of like two or even three divisions squashed into one and Byrne was in the bottom club).

My choice to put Shodipo into the tentative "ready for call up" group is in this case a bit of a gut call, admittedly, based on the endorsement of Hasselbaink, when he said that he was not going to send him out on loan and had immediate plans for him and the fact that, so far at least, Shodipo has held his place, whereas Byrne is not part of the immediate plans of his parent club's plans and seems to have lost his place at Blackburn. I just feel that Shodipo seems to be on an upward trajectory at this moment whereas Byrne has hit a bit of bump in the road in his career path. Of course this situation could change over the next couple of months if Byrne gets back in the Blackburn team and starts to impress.

**liamoo11** · 08/11/2016, 6:48 PM

http://www.fai.ie/ireland/news/king-...-double-header. A second duffus brother called up and the keeper from Utd included. City whelan who is gettin very little action in liverpools 23 s included and Declan rice who is an under 18 promoted .