Keiren Westwood fully committed to Republic of Ireland cause

For a guy who was once on course to be a copper, Keiren Westwood has generated his fair share of suspicion, but as the 31-year-old prepares for his second European Championship with Ireland he insists he has always been committed to the cause.

The Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper has played just 61 minutes of international football in the last 2½ years and his repeated withdrawal or absence from squads has contributed to a sense that either he is ambivalent about the Ireland team or the Ireland manager is ambivalent about him.

His selection for France on Tuesday ahead of the immensely popular David Forde seems to have knocked the latter notion on the head, and Westwood insists had it not been for injuries he would have on a plane every time he got a call-up.

“It’s easy to throw that at me, I suppose, and it’s frustrating to read, but there’s no real substance to it,” says the former Coventry and Carlisle player when asked about the underlying feeling out there that he may not exactly have green flowing through his veins.

“It’s not like I’m fully fit and I’ve gone ‘nah, that’s not for me’. The only reason I wouldn’t be in the squad is because I was injured. If you are injured you are injured, and there is not much you can do about it.

“Sheffield  Wednesday pay the wages, don’t they? So I am their player. So they are saying ‘you’re carrying injuries here, what’s going on? You can’t go’ and this, that and the other. So I am caught between a rock and a hard place.”

He says he gets on fine with Martin O'Neill, although he recalls telling the then Sunderland manager when he was at the club and playing regularly that Giovanni Trapattoni had said he would only be Irish number one as long as he retained his spot at club level.

“Before I knew it I was out of both teams. It was real hard to take because I was playing, I was number one for the national team and it was great.”

Game time

He left the Stadium of Light looking for more regular game time, and got it at Sheffield Wednesday where he played a key part in the club’s push for promotion this season.

Critically, he says, he struggled until the spring to overcome injuries sustained last summer, and only hit his best form over the latter part of the campaign. Seven clean sheets in his final 12 outings certainly suggests he is back to his best, something that has attracted interest from top-flight clubs like Hull, Middlesbrough Everton and West Brom, none of whom will be exactly daunted by his €3.2 million release clause.

It is also that form that persuaded O’Neill to pick him for France ahead of Forde and, though clearly delighted at having made the cut, Westwood is sensitive regarding his rival’s acute sense of disappointment as the news was delivered.

Handshake

“There were no congratulations to anybody,” he says of the scene shortly after the end of Tuesday night’s game against Belarus, it was more shaking hands. Darron [Gibson] and Eunan [O’Kane] were sat next to me. It was not great, I just gave them a hug and a handshake. Fordey as well, which was obviously the main thing to do. There was no high fiving, no nothing, everybody just got on the bus. It was a bit eerie, like.”

Then came the departures. “It started last night. It was another hug and handshake. We had a bit of food when we got back, and the manager had a quick meeting, a goodbye sort of thing.  It wasn’t great, as you can imagine.”

His aim now is to play in France, but then that has to be the ambition of everyone makes the trip, and in truth it would, whatever the arguments, be quite something if he sweeps in to start Ireland’s group games.

When pressed on where he stands against Darren Randolph and Shay Given he takes a pass.

“I don’t know. I’m playing for Sheffield Wednesday, but they are both playing at Premier League clubs. You can look at it on the flip-side.”

He says the team will be eager and a little fresher perhaps than four years ago when weeks of intensive training prior to Poland left the squad “f--king wrecked”.

Things were “great” under Trapattoni, he says, but for him at least things are starting to look brighter under O’Neill as well.