Mary Hanniganfinds Newcastle's experienced goalkeeper fully focused on his return to international duty

Having named 25 players in his squad for the games in Bratislava and Prague, Republic of Ireland manager Steve Staunton could hardly have been heartened by the statistics from the weekend's fixtures in England and Scotland, when only nine of his squad played the full 90 minutes for their clubs, only five of them in the Premier League.

With two of that number already ruled out - goalkeeper Wayne Henderson and winger Alan O'Brien - and fitness concerns remaining over Darren Potter and, more significantly, Steve Finnan and Paul McShane, it was probably with considerable relief that Staunton greeted the sight of his first-choice goalkeeper Shay Given arriving at the team hotel yesterday, not least when the latter declared: "Make no mistake, I'll be totally ready to go on Saturday night."

After limping out of a pre-season friendly against Sampdoria with a groin injury, Given made his first appearance of the season in Newcastle's League Cup win over Barnsley last Wednesday. But when he was left on the bench by Sam Allardyce for Saturday's game against Wigan there were, initially, renewed concerns about his fitness.

Given, though, seemed peeved about manager Sam Allardyce's decision to stick with Steve Harper in goal, believing himself to have proved his fitness against Barnsley.

"Yeah, I was disappointed to be back on the bench, but I haven't actually spoken to the manager yet, what with going away with Ireland, so I haven't had a chance to sit down with him and have a chat with him - so I'll probably do that when I get back.

"I'm not sure what his thinking is. I've been out for a while with my groin, I played Wednesday night, so maybe he felt it was better I didn't play Saturday, not to put too much pressure on the injury. I don't know, I'm just guessing."

The Donegal man seemed unaware Allardyce had said after the game that Harper had kept his place because he had done nothing to lose it since the start of the season, and that Given would have to fight to reclaim his place.

"Well, we'll see what happens," he said. "I don't really know what his thoughts are because I haven't spoken to him, he never spoke to me, so it's hard to say what his thinking is for the future.

"I'm really just focusing on these games for Ireland, excited about them and getting away from the club, a change of scenery. I've been in the gym the last three or four weeks and you can get quite down about that, it's nice to get away. I'm not really thinking about the club at the minute, just looking forward to these two huge games."

Given injured his right groin when kicking the ball against Sampdoria and while he has "done kicking since and it felt fine", he added, "I'm just hoping it stays that way".

"I've looked at my kicking technique a little bit, I'm trying to change it, to try and put less pressure on my groin, so we're hoping to improve on that while doing more strength work in the gym so we can keep on top of it. But, yeah, I'm fine, I've been training now for a couple of weeks, my fitness is okay, touch wood."

If he is fit for the Slovakia game, Given will become the most capped Republic of Ireland goalkeeper of all-time, overtaking Packie Bonner's 80 mark.

"That would mean a lot to me, it's a fantastic thing, if you had said that to me 10 years ago I wouldn't have believed you. But when I go out on Saturday night I won't really be thinking about that, to be honest. It's when you finish playing football you can look back and reminisce about these things, but there's so much at stake in these games I won't be thinking about records."

"We've been in major championships before, but it's been a while, we're all missing it, we need to get back there. The players are desperate to do it, we're not thinking about two years ahead, or whatever, we're thinking about now.

"You've got to believe, we're not just going for the craic, to make up the numbers, we're trying to qualify. Hopefully, in 10 days time it will be a lot clearer and we'll have a great chance of going to the European Championships."