I'm not sure it's an aberration.
We know that Irish players have been going over to England in ever-decreasing numbers since the mid 90s. Brian Kerr's trilogy coincided almost exactly with the opening of the Premier League to all comers, and Irish players starting to get squeezed out. I think the decline has been linear since then, partly because we've done feck all to address it - in fact, we've actively failed to keep up with best junior coaching standards here, which would also explain why the players just aren't there.
Our U21s results have been appalling the past 15 years. (Apart from the most recent campaign, where we still didn't actually qualify) It's not just that we've never qualified for the Euro U21s ever, it's that for 2006/07/09/11, say, we won four qualifying games of 28, including no away games. That's - roughly - the era of players you'd be looking at blooding at senior level after Euro 2012. Again, it's harder to summarise qualifying squads because there's more of them than finals squads, but for example,
here's the final qualifying game of 2011 qualifying. Coleman, Brady and Hourihane are the only full internationals out of those 14 I think. The players are -
Stephen Henderson - now with Palace, but has played four games in the last six seasons
Séamus Coleman - 59 caps
Brendan Moloney - retired in 2018 with injury. Was with Northampton
Rob Kiernan - US second tier
Séamus Conneely - Accrington Stanley
Richie Towell - Salford
Conor Hourihane - 24 caps
Conor Clifford - Bray
Adam Rooney - Solihull Moore. Could well have been capped while flying at Aberdeen.
Robbie Brady - 57 caps
Graham Carey - CSKA Sofia
Shane McEleney - Finn Harps
Danny Kearns - Cliftonville
Joe Mason - MK Dons
Maybe Rooney deserved a cap, but all the rest have either (a) come through to the senior squad or (b) barely played above the third tier.
You could run that experiment for a variety of squads but I don't think you'd find too many who got away.
Andy Reid and Gary Doherty both had 80 senior club appearances when he made his international debut. Douglas and Quinn had 50 senior games. We barely have that in the squad at the moment.
So I do think it is the case that we've had very few decent young players coming through, and the questions then have to be asked why that is. Fewer players going to England is one. No professional environment domestically for the past decade or so is another. Poor coaching here is a third. Miguel Delaney in one of his articles says that Irish players don't have the technical ability to step up to the mark in England. I think we're seeing all that come home to roost. And it's a huge job to fix.
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